THE OPAL SEA 




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THE OPAL SEA 



CONTINUED STUDIES IN 
IMPRESSIONS AND APPEARANCES 



BY 



JOHN C. VAN DYKE 

u 

AUTHOR OF "THE DESERT," "NATURE FOR ITS OWN SAKE, 
"ART FOR ART'S SAKE," ETC., ETC. 



NEW YORK 

CHAELES SCEIBNEE'S SONS 
1906 



LIBRARY 'of CONGRESS] 
Two Copies Received 

MAR 3 1906 



CLASS 









Copyright, 1906, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published, March, 1906 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



PREFACE-DEDICATION 

Co 
A. T. 

It is the heat of July. Along this Dalma- 
tian coast, since early morning, the white tops 
of the Velebit Mountains have been glimmer- 
ing and quivering in the rosy air like phan- 
toms of the mirage. The sky that started so 
darkly blue has trembled on to evening through 
every shade of lilac and silver, and the smooth 
Adriatic lying under it has shown no floor of 
lapis-lazuli, but in its place the pearl-like sur- 
face of the opal. Slowly undulating, gently 
moving, but with no flaw upon its face, the 
sea has thrown off, hour after hour, the min- 
gled hues of the Oriental stone. Green of 
emerald and aquamarine, purple of amethyst, 
blue of sapphire, rose of diamond and gold of 
topaz, all have passed and repassed; and now 
at sunset, with every color fused into flame, 
the scarlet reflection of a cloud in the distant 
water gives the fire of the opal — the point of 
high light on its surface. Therefore why not 
the Opal Sea? 



VI PREFACE-DEDICATION 

Indeed, my title is not so fantastic as one 
might think. We have always heard of the 
sea as " deep blue " and fancied perhaps it could 
be no other color; yet if you look down upon 
it from a cliff where it flows over white rocks 
you will find it a shade of green, and if you 
plunge beneath the surface and open your eyes 
under water you will discover it is still an- 
other shade of green. Then there are great 
arms of the ocean that from their color are 
known as the Eed Sea, the Yellow Sea, the 
White Sea, the Black Sea. It has many hues 
in different quarters of the globe. But none 
of these local colors is comparable in extent or 
continuance to the color reflected from the sea's 
surface. Whatever hue is in the sky, whatever 
tint may be produced by heat or cold, by sun- 
light or moonlight or cloud-light, the water 
mirror will give it back. The sea is not blue 
or green or yellow alone, but all the rainbow 
hues blended and fused by sunlight into irides- 
i cent fire. Therefore why not the Opal Sea ? 
And, again, I mean by that title to suggest 
that this book, though it treats of scientific 
things at times, is, in design at least, a book 
of color and atmosphere. The splendor of the 
sea rather than its origin, its cartography, or 
its chemistry has been my aim. It may seem 



PREFACE-DEDICATION vii 

strange that in this material age one should 
think of the ocean as anything more than an 
element to be analyzed, a power to be utilized, 
or a highway to be commercialized. The 
beauty of the world has never been of great 
pith or moment to mankind. Its admirers are 
few, its destroyers are many. And those who 
cry out against wanton destruction, those who 
have seen forest and prairie and mountain 
wrecked, and every river of our native land 
blackened in the name of manufactures, now 
go down to the shore and, looking out from the 
rocky headlands, thank God for the unpolluted 
sea. Man has plowed that sea with ships, 
fought for it with navies, assumed command of 
it from time to time; but never because of its 
beauty. A more sordid aim has been his and 
made him quite oblivious to charm. He has 
pursued the golden will-o'-the-wisp, and Death 
has sailed with him. Will he never learn that 
happiness is not a matter of possessions, and 
that mental content, joy of heart, a love of 
loveliness, are more potent factors in human 
well-being than naval power or commercial 
gain? When the hurly burly's done, when the 
flower is frayed and torn, perhaps he may heed, 
but that will not be in our day. In the mean- 
time the great ocean in all its glory spreads 



Vlll PKEFACE-DEDICATION 

before us; the lights and colors of its sun- 
woven fabric are still ours; we still may know 
the beauty of the Opal Sea. 

Not here alone by this Dalmatian coast is 
the wondrous play of light and color on the 
outstretched sea. By the home waters of the 
Atlantic, by West Indian strand and Peruvian 
headland and South Sea beach there is the 
same glint of flame and fire. The distant 
seas where once rode golden galleons, the still 
waters of tropic reefs where polyps rear castles 
of coral, the encircling waves of lone islands 
where seals lurk and sea birds clamor, are 
merely parts of the great whole. All the oceans 
are one. North or south of the line, at the 
equator or at the poles, around Iceland or 
around Formosa there is but the one water. 
And up and down the vast expanse, every- 
where over its shining surface, with summer 
suns and rosy atmospheres, there spreads the 
violet light, the pearly color, of the Oriental 
stone. Therefore I ask again: Why not the 
Opal Sea? 

John C. Van Dyke. 

Ragusa, Dalmatia. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter I. The Discovery. — Early fear of the sea — 
Sea tales — The phantom ship — The maelstrom — Cities 
under the sea — Fortune seekers — Sea-rovers and sea- 
lovers — First coasters — Hebrews, Tyrians and Sidonians 
— Phoenician voyagers — Greek traders — Galleys of Car- 
thage and Rome — Rise of Islam — Renaissance com- 
merce — Venice at its height — Skirting the Atlantic — 
Baltic and Icelandic voyages — The Western Ocean — 
Columbus and his courage — The new world — Balboa 
and the Pacific — Magellan and the extent of the sea — 
The vast Pacific— Exploration and conquest — Geo- 
graphical limits of the sea — Scientific study of the sea — 
The original element — Forming of the sea bed — Origin 
of life in the sea — The organic in the inorganic — Michelet 
and the evolutionists — Mucus and protoplasm — The un- 
thinking sea — -Life and death— The sea's indifference to 
man — Wrecks of ships and empires — Repose of the 
sea — Beauty of the sea 1 

Chapter II. Swirls of the Sea. — Currents in the ocean 
— Extent of land and water — Sea level — Disturbances 
of level — Effect of earth's attraction — The swelling sea 
— The tides — Cause of tides — Attraction of the moon — 
High and low tides — Spring and neap tides — Western 
tide wave — How it travels—Its height — Wedged water 



CONTENTS 



— Tide in inland seas — The Norwegian maelstrom — 
Scylla and Charybdis — Races and whirlpools — Bores 
of Colorado and Amazon — Tidal waves— Great waves 
in Pacific — Krakatoa — Waves from its explosion — 
Travel of waves — Undulation and drift of water — 
Ocean currents — The Gulf Stream — Japanese current — 
Variations of currents — Early beliefs about currents — 
Franklin and Maury — Trade Winds — Ocean currents 
following winds — Circulation of seas — Exchange of 
currents — Exchange in Red Sea and Mediterranean — 
Difference in temperature a cause of circulation — Swirls 
and rings of the sea — Swirls of the air — Life-giving 
properties of change — Swirl of the solar system — The 
Milky Way a Sargasso Sea — The search for truth . . 24 

Chapter III. In the Depths. — Surface effect of 
storms — Shallowness of currents — Depth of tides and 
tide theories — Stillness of ocean depths — Darkness of 
depths — In the pit — Intense cold of under waters — 
Ocean temperatures — The sea bed — Mountains in the 
sea — Volcanic and coralline formations — Pot-holes and 
chasms — Sea troughs — Sinks of ooze — Shore beds and 
their bottoms — Shore benches — Haunts of the octopus 
— Make-up of sea muds — Terrigenous deposits — Glacial 
ooze — Volcanic dust — Abysmal deposits — Pteropod 
ooze — Globigerina and Radiolarian oozes — Red Clay — 
Contents of sea pits — Deep-sea records — Ocean trans- 
parency- — Clearness of Mediterranean, Carribean, and 
Pacific — Bottom reflections — Muddy bottoms — Mineral 
stains — Sea sawdust — Gulf Stream coloring — Local sea 
color — Salt particles in water — Effect of blue sky — 
Salinity and its effect — Coloring by depth — Beauty of 
sea color — Temperature as a factor — Color local and 
reflected 48 



CONTENTS XI 

Chapter IV. The Great Mirror. — Solomon's Brazen 
Sea — Roundness of the sea circle — Ship the center of 
circle — Rise-up of the horizon — Bowls of blue — Sea 
illusions — Limitless space — The two blues — Color as 
known to the ancients — The sea mirror — The darker 
image — Shadows on water — Reflections in ruffled seas — 
The sea under cloud light — Reflections in shadowed 
spaces — Light and color from sky — Sunset in the water 
— Muddy waters as reflectors — Effect of temperature 
on color — Color at poles and tropics — The opal sea — 
Silver grays and twilight purples— The Mediterranean 
— The Dalmatian coast — At Spalato and Ragusa — 
Opalescent air and sea — Sea in early morning on Gulf 
of Corinth — Mount Parnassus— In the Cyclades — Sap- 
phire waters — Opal seas in many latitudes — Coast of 
Mexico — Cold colors in. tropics — Quality of light — Dif- 
ferent tones — Dawn at sea — Spread of light — On ruffled 
seas — Coloring of sea at mid-day — Sunset colorings in 
water — Eastward lying waters at sunset — Moonlight 
on sea — The Angelus hour — The Angels Pathway — Our 
place in nature — Starlight on the sea — Guiding stars 
— Dark windless nights — The Blue Bowl 70 

Chapter V. Ocean Plains. — Continuity of the sea 
— Its endurance — The Pacific from Mexico — Southern 
Ocean — Unexplored waters — Looking seaward from 
Mexican highlands — Ocean swells and their movements 
— Glassy surfaces — Region of Trade Winds — Surface 
movements — Modern ships and sea travel — The ship's 
furrow — Whiteness of foam — Crests of foam — Colored 
crests — Wave crests at night — Flung spray — Rainbows 
— The ship's wake and its silver light — Phosphorescent 
light — Fields of animalculse — St. Elmo's Light — Sea 
mirage — Fata morgana — The ship in the air — Effects 



Xll CONTENTS 

of mist — White horizons — The mist veil and color- 
beauty — Lunar rainbows — Summer nights ontheiEgean 
— Fogs at sea — Black fog — Fog effects — Icebergs and 
their color — Forms of bergs — Polar ice-fields — Snow at 
sea — Falling rain — Driving rain — Water spouts — Spouts, 
how formed — Evening light after rain — Land in sight 
— Appearance of land — Approach to the shore — Lagoon 
islands — Pacific islands — Coral groups — Romance of 
the South Sea islands — Concerning happiness 95 

Chapter VI. The Wind's Will. — The disturbing 
winds — Skin of water drops — Covering of sea-surface — 
Stretching and breaking of covering — Ruffled seas — Sea 
before storm — Choppy sea — White caps — How they 
break — White caps to the swimmer — Waves with a half 
gale — Storm waves — Cyclones and thunder storms at 
sea — The " northeaster "—Spume and water dust — 
Flying scud — Stormy seas from the cross-trees — Color 
of stormy sea — Forms of waves — Grace of waves — 
"Waves mountain high" — Wave heights — Wind in 
English Channel — Along coast of Holland — Night 
with storm on North Sea — Drive of the wind — Storm 
in the Roaring Forties — "Gray-back" waves — Sailing 
vessels in heavy seas — Plunge of the ocean-liner — A 
great storm on the New England coast — How it begins 
— Rain, wind and rising surge — The great seas — The 
white-ridged ocean — Sea-gray coloring — Lighthouse 
and bell-buoy — The pound of waves — The subsidence — 
Wrecks and wreckers — The victim — Flotsam of the 
wave — A sea horror — Tragedies of the sea 119 

Chapter VII. The Wave's Tooth. — Sea barriers— - 
The cliff wall — The blow of the wave on the cliff — Foun- 
dation-walls in deep water — The shelving shore — ■ 



CONTENTS Xlll 

Friction of incoming waves — The break and recession 
of waves — Height of storm waves along shelving shores 
— Bell Light and Eddystone — The impact of waves — 
Destruction of cliffs, shores, and islands — Gnaw of the 
wave's tooth— Grit in sea water — Wear along cliffs — 
Bowlders at cliff base — Fate of the bowlders — Soft 
parts of cliff worn first — Spouting horns — Wave grottoes 
— Ocean caves — Within the caves — Weird lights and 
colors — Fiords — -Victor Hugo's Lysefiord — Bays and 
promontories, how made— Towers along shore — Reefs 
and sunken rocks — The ground-down sands — Bars and 
necks of land — Lagoons and islands — Marsh lands — 
Islands lost in storms — The Louisiana coast — Give and 
take of land and sea — Return of the sands from the sea 
— Sand drif tings and dunes — Dykes and dunes as sea 
barriers — North Sea flooding Holland — Traveling sands 
— -Villages destroyed by sands — Sahara sands — The sea 
at the foot of the cliff 141 

Chapter VIII. Sounding Shores. — Footprints of 
the sea — Dover Cliff and Sandwich beach — Old town of 
Sandwich— The meadows— Gray waters of the shore — 
Goodwin Sands and its wrecks — The wet beach — Half 
submerged flats of sand — Gray harmonies — Somber 
colors of North Sea — The Scottish coast of Sutherland — 
Central American beaches — Glitter and litter of the 
shore — Singing sands — Crescent beaches — Irregular 
beaches of stone and gravel — Strewn on the sands — 
Shell beaches — White sands — Waves on the beach — 
Beach combers — Forms of breaking waves — Grace of 
water movement — Color of waves — Water mirrors on 
the beach — Reflection of mirrors — Retreat of the water 
— Wave traceries on sand — Color of shore — Light effects 
and shore reflections — Moonlight along shore — Noc- 






/ 



XIV CONTENTS 

turnes — Sound of the sea on the beach — Other sounds 
in nature — Recurrent beating of the sea — Suggestion 
of the sound — Science and sentiment 160 

Chapter IX. Gardens of the Sea. — Growths of the 
sea different from those of the land — Conditions and 
place of growth — Peculiar adaptation — Strength and 
fitness of sea weeds — Grace of sea weeds — Swaying rock 
weeds — Patterned forms — Algae of the greater depths 
— Extent of sea gardens — Growths along shore — 
Popular classifications — Green algse — Blooms and net 
weeds — Blue-green and brown algae — Kelp and rock 
weed — Red algae — Dulses and mosses — "Flower- 
animals" — The plant likeness superficial — Marvels of 
design and color — Great variety of sea life — One-celled 
life — Sponges, their kinds and colors — Polyps — Sea 
anemones and corals— Coral colors and reefs — Jelly 
fishes — Sea-nettles — Medusoid types — Living ribbons 
and necklaces — Sea urchins— Star fishes — Brittle stars 
— Sea lilies and stone lilies — Holothurians — Sea cu- 
cumbers — Shell fish — Univalves and bivalves — Conches, 
oysters, clams — Scallops and cockles — Cephalopods — 
The pearly nautilus — The octopus — Size and equipment 
of the octopus — Crabs, lobsters, and barnacles — Their 
hard shells, how formed — Their defense and attack — 
Color of sea life — Sea gardens in Mexican Gulf — Seen 
through a water glass — Tropical fishes — Red snappers, 
pompanos, sharks, porpoises — The chase and death — 
Changes in sea life — Testimony of the rock — Nature 
maintaining the status quo 177 

Chapter X. Dwellers in the Deep. — Marine life in 
the great depths — Problem of light — Phosphorescence 
and luminescence — The violet rays — Other lights in 



CONTENTS XV 

the depths — Plankton — Lantern fishes with photo- 
phores — Grotesque quality of deep sea fishes— Oceanic 
pressure — Effect on fishes — Peculiar design of sea fishes 
— Voracious appetites — Defense and attack — The 
dismal existence — Coloring of bottom fishes — Surface 
fishes — The bluefish — Herrings and porpoises — Men- 
haden and mackerels — Movement of the schools — 
Flying fish — How they fly — Vibration and sailing — 
Chased by the albicore — The capture — Bird enemies 
— The coryphene — Swiftness of porpoises — Speed of 
the sea rovers — Fitness to their element — Tarpons and 
tunas — Coloring of school fishes — Protective colorings 
— Changeable colorings — Coloring of the mackerels and 
coryphenes — The whales and their colorings — Enemies 
of the whale — The sea turtle — Seals — Their habits and 
growth — Killed for their beauty — All sea life destroy- 
ing and is destroyed — Endurance of the type — What 
lies beyond 202 

Chapter XI. Gray Wings. — The sea as the source 
of all — Sea birds and their voracity — The pelicans — 
The cormorants, shags, and divers — Chasing fish under 
water — Penguins, auks, and puffins — Long-legged 
waders — Flamingoes — The scarlet ibis — Storks — Danc- 
ing cranes — Shore birds — Turnstones and sand pipers — 
Sand pipers lost at sea — Finches and warblers in the 
shrouds of the ship — Land birds at sea — Equipment 
of the true sea wanderer — Muscling and feathering of 
sea birds — Enormous endurance — Gray coloring of sea 
birds — Terns, gulls, and their flight — How gulls live — 
The frigate bird — The wonderful sailer — A sea pirate — 
Catching flying fish — Frigate bird's bad reputation — His 
fitness for long flight — The wandering albatross — Flight 
feathers of the albatross — His sailing qualities — Where 



I 






XVI CONTENTS 

he lives — The tropic bird — His steering gear — Cape 
pigeons and whale birds — Wilson's petrel — The stormy- 
petrel — Flight of the petrel — The untiring wing — Self 
reliance of the petrel — Joy in adversity — Persistence 
of life — Omnipresent energy — Fitness and beauty — 
Gray Wings a part of the plan 223 

Chapter XII. Ships that Pass. — Coming down to 
the sea — The native element — Emotions by the sea — 
The sail — The disappearing ship — Watchers of ships — 
Ships that have passed — The butterflies of commerce 
— The harbor to-day — White wings and gray wings — 
The full-rigged ship — Colors of her sails — A white yacht- 
ing squadron — Colored sails of the Adriatic — Venetian 
fishing boats — The ocean steamer — The steamer putting 
to sea— The power of steam — The steady drive forward 
— Steaming through storm — The persistent engines — 
The picturesque ship at sea — The battle-ship and our 
point of view — The common resting place of ships — 
Tragedies of the sea — The sea not "rapacious" — Grim 
sea tales furnished by men — The real "horror" of the 
sea — The quest of gold and its results — Hardships of 
the explorers — Searching for gold at the north — 
Sunken treasures — Race hatred on the sea — The early 
carriers and merchantmen — Ocean liners of to-day — 
Growing appreciation of sea beauty — Atlantic crossings 
— The supreme element — A false view — The lure of the 
sea — The suicide — Neither life nor the sea always 
storm-tossed — Maintenance of life — The sea the last to 
go — New eyes opening to the light — The beauty that 
shall be 244 



THE OPAL SEA 






(. 



THE OPAL SEA 



CHAPTEE I 



THE DISCOVERY 



A feae of the sea was from the beginning. 
The early tribes that far back in the dawn of 
history dwelt by the eastern shores of the 
Mediterranean knew that fear. A great awe 
filled them as from shore and promontory they 
looked outward to the meeting-place of sea and 
sky. The western waves came beating in under 
the cliffs, surge following surge endlessly; but 
whence came they? Beyond the distant line 
all was mystery. No dark wings of ships, only 
the flame wings of the morning, had traveled 
there. The deep wrapped the earth on every 
side. The wise ones taught that the sun, moon, 
and stars rose out of it, and descended into it 
again; that it had once flooded all the land; 
that it was the infinite out of which all things 
came and back to which all things would return. 
No one could measure its extent; no one but 
felt its power to destroy. The little world 



The 
fear. 



C' 



THE OPAL SEA 



Tales of the 
sea. 



The phan- 
tom ship. 



lifted, island-like, above an unknown waste; 
and man was no more than a shipwrecked sailor 
clinging to a scrap of rock. 

When more familiar grown and many sails 
sank and rose along the horizon rim, the stories 
brought up from below the verge but added to 
its terrors. Beyond the Pillars of Hercules 
there was a great wilderness of water 

" Which birds travel not within a year, 
So vast it is and fearful." 

Nothing but water — water that could not be 
drunk by man or beast. Far to the south 
under a burning tropic sun, great calms spread 
over a glassy sea and there, caught in the 
silent web of heat, ships rolled listlessly upon 
the lazy swell and starving crews hauled and 
heaved and set sails that never filled, never 
caught a breath of air. No breeze to stir, no 
drop of rain to save — naught but the hot air to 
wither and the blazing sunlight to bleach. Be- 
yond the region of calms, from an unknown sea 
still farther to the south — so the tale ran — 
came the phantom ship that always sailed on 
the edge of a storm and was an omen of evil to 
come. It never came into port, it was only an 
uneasy ghost sinking and reappearing along 
the misty horizon; but it filled the mariner's 



THE DISCOVERY 



soul with fear and added another haunting 
mystery to the sea. 

At the north were terrors, more real perhaps, 
and quite as fearsome. Snow and ice encom- 
passed and wind overpowered. In the great 
storms there were waves that rose from out 
the hollows of the sea, beating and breaking 
the stoutest timbers and sending ships stagger- 
ing downward to their ocean grave with sails 
still set and hands still clinging to the rigging. 
And there, too, was the great maelstrom com- 
pared with which Scylla and Charybdis were 
mere eddies. Hundreds of leagues away the 
suction of the whirl could be felt upon the hap- 
less ship, and once caught no crowding on of 
sail or bending to the oar could make head- 
way against it. A monster polyp dwelt there 
and stirred the pool with waving tentacles 
and lived on human prey. Around him on the 
deep sea-floor were spar and rib and anchor, 
hulks of ships and dead men's bones and jewels 
gleaming out of hollow eyes. 

Not there nor elsewhere was the bottom of 
the sea a longed-for dwelling-place. In the 
still Mediterranean men had noticed far down 
through the clear water the coral mounds, the 
sea-forests, and the flat valleys of ooze. And 
strange tales were told of voiceless cities that 



The great 
maelstrom 



'A 



r 






THE OPAL SEA 



Cities under 
the sea. 



Fortune 
seekers. 



had been seen beneath the wave, of silent pal- 
aces with towers and walls and blue-green 
grottoes all tenantless save to the soft flooding 
of the under-currents. Nothing lived or moved 
there but the monsters of the deep. It was a 
kingdom of silence, a realm of the dead. So 
deep-rooted was this belief that the very name, 
" mare" came to suggest the shores of the abode 
of the dead. It was not to be wondered at that 
with such weird whisperings the sea should 
seem a fear-compelling place. 

Yet with all the dread of the great waste, 
with all the danger, there was a glamour about 
it that drew men on. Ships sailed away and 
never came back, but others took their place. 
Fame and fortune were alluring prizes. Be- 
yond the Pillars were the " Western Islands " 
where no snow or cold ever fell, where the 
meadows and uplands surpassed the Garden of 
the Hesperides and the sands of the shore glit- 
tered with gold. Wealth and empire danced in 
the sailor's brain. Where the rainbow rested, 
at the end of the earth, there lay the crown and 
the treasure. Others there were — visionaries, 
adventurers, sea-rovers — who with no great love 
of possessions, still felt drawn to the sea. No 
matter how frightfully she buffeted the earth- 
children, nor how violently she cast them 



THE DISCOVERY 



forth upon the land, they always came trooping 
back to her. Many times that fateful man, 
Ulysses, suffered shipwreck and dire disaster; 
yet still he "languished for the purple seas." 
The pathway was dangerous — the Greek epics 
keep calling it the "shadowy/' the "black," 
the " treacherous " ; and the Hebrew books the 
"noisy," the "roaring," the "raging" — but 
still men ventured along it. It was a dream to 
the explorer, a means of gain to the trader, a 
refuge to the robber; and so the boats kept 
reaching farther seaward from port and cape 
to headland and island; and year by year more 
sails appeared flecking the floor of blue. 

But many centuries were to elapse before men 
came and went freely along the ocean high- 
ways. The fear of the wave kept them back; 
the lure of the wave drew them on. How tim- 
idly and awkwardly the pre-Homeric traders 
coasted the eastern end of the Mediterranean ! 
No one knows if the Chaldseo-Assyrians and the 
Egyptians did even that much. They may 
have achieved no more than the navigation of 
their own rivers. As for the Israelites, the sea 
was always a barrier to them, never a highway. 
They had ports in the Eed Sea and carried on 
an Oriental trade to be sure, but not without 
Tyrian and Sidonian help. The Boole of Kings 



Sea-rovers 
and sea- 
lovers. 



The first 
coasters. 



^ 



f 



THE OPAL SEA 



Hebrews, 
Tyrians 
and 
Sidonians. 



Phoenician 
voyagers. 



keeps the record that : " King Solomon made a 
navy of ships at Ezion-geber which is beside 
Eloth, on the shore of the Eed Sea in the land 
of Edom. And Hiram (of Tyre) sent in the 
navy his servants, shipmen that had knowledge 
of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And 
they came to Ophir and fetched from thence 
gold, fonr hundred and twenty talents, and 
brought it to King Solomon." But Ezion- 
geber, where the ships of Jehoshaphat were 
broken, was not on the Mediterranean; and 
Ophir is variously supposed to be on the coast 
of Arabia near the Gulf of Oman or in Farther 
India or possibly in Eastern Africa. In other 
words, the voyages were along the coast, not 
on the open ocean plains. In this respect they 
were quite different from those of Hiram and 
his predecessors. 

What first started the early Phoenicians to 
the West may only be conjectured. From the 
hills of southern Lebanon at sunset one can 
see the black peak of Troodos on the island 
of Cyprus, resting hazily against the evening 
sky; and perhaps this distant mountain sug- 
gested the first flight of the voyagers. Once 
at Cyprus it was easy enough to move on to 
Rhodes and Crete and from thence to the is- 
lands of the Greek Archipelago, or by the 



THE DISCOVERY 



northern shores of Africa to Malta, Sicily, Sar- 
dinia, Massilia and Tarshish in Spain. 

After the first ships of Phoenicia had trav- 
ersed the seas of the West there were plenty of 
less courageous sails to follow in the wake. 
The spirit of navigation grew apace. Soon 
every rock-bound Ithaca had its fishing fleet 
and navy, and in extending its dominions ex- 
tended discovery. From Lydia, Caria, Phrygia 
and the far Cimmerian Bosphorus, from the 
islands of the Mgean and the shores of the 
Greek mainland, the black ships of traders 
drove down the wine-dark seas. Westward the 
courses lay. Centuries before the Christian 
era there were sails from Tyre and Sidon 
skimming along the North African and Sicilian 
coasts, passing through the Tyrrhenian Sea, 
passing out through the Pillars, and up the 
coast to the gray waters of the English Chan- 
nel. It was not long before the great Phoeni- 
cian colony, Carthage, rose to power. Her 
merchantmen went hither and thither to dis- 
tant countries and under Harmo (500 B.C.) her 
galleys darkened the uninhabited waters of 
western Africa. In the after-time, burdened 
with produce from the Ganges and the Nile, 
hundreds of sails were moving toward Pome. 
Long before the sea struggle at Actium, the 



Greek 
traders. 



Galleys of 
Carthage 
and Rome. 



^ 



r 



THE OPAL SEA 



The rise of 
Islam. 



Renais- 
sance com- 
merce. 



Mediterranean had known its rider; and long 
before the Caesars passed away a shrewd knowl- 
edge of navigation had been attained. 

Then followed that period of history known 
as the Dark Ages when human energy seemed 
crushed under the ruins of Kome, and civiliza- 
tion for centuries lay still in a long swoon. 
The Goth ruled all the western shores of the 
Mediterranean but with no love for the sea; 
and the Eastern Empire was too badly crip- 
pled to battle successfully in hollow ships 
against Homeric elements. But a stronger 
power was rising in the East and moving west- 
ward like a tidal wave. Year by year the Mos- 
lem Empire spread until it embraced Syria, 
Egypt, the northern shores of Africa, Sicily, 
Sardinia, and Spain. The star and the crescent 
were in the ascendant, and Islam dominated 
the realm of waters as it did the realm of 
thought. 

Slowly Europe roused from her long stupor. 
The old trade with the Orient was resumed and 
the colored sails of Italy went drifting along 
the Dalmatian coast and through the Greek 
islands to the East. The courts of Europe 
had grown luxurious in a barbaric way; and 
Venice, Florence, and Genoa were supplying 
them with silks, stuffs, spices, perfumes, jew- 



THE DISCOVERY 



els, glass, from Araby and India. The gla- 
mour of the East and the religious fervor of 
the West got into the brain and long files of 
crusaders, knights, warriors, adventurers came 
trooping to the Italian shores demanding trans- 
portation to the land of the Infidel. When 
that mad struggle was over there came the 
long quarrels between Venice and Constanti- 
nople, the bloody encounters with Dalmatian 
pirates, the sea fights between the Genoese and 
the Venetians — all of them broken by many 
years of comparative peace and prosperity. 
Glorious days of sea triumph were those when 
the Doge went forth in the gilded Bucentaur 
to wed the Adriatic, when hundreds of argosies 
were tossing on the Mediterranean, and Vene- 
tian war galleys came and went in flocks 
that covered the seas ! At its height the island 
city floated over three thousand merchantmen; 
Genoa was no mean second; and Pisa, Eome, 
Eavenna — all the coast towns of the peninsula 
— had the,'.. - ships in the carrying trade. Wher- 
ever a harbor offered and a town grew there 
the fleets of Italy cast anchor. And one by 
one each indentation in the coast came to be 
known and found its way upon the maps. 

But, again, all this was skirting the shore or 
following well-traveled roads of the sea from 



Venice at 
its height 
of power. 



10 



THE OPAL SEA 



Skirting the 
Atlantic. 



Voyages to 
the Baltic, 
Iceland, 
Greenland. 



one port to another. It was navigation on an 
inland basin where the promontories, capes, 
reefs, and islands were well known. Beyond the 
land-locked Mediterranean the voyages were 
less frequent. True enough, the early Phoeni- 
cians had passed through the Straits and had 
found their way, "through the misty sea of 
darkness lying under the Bear, who alone is 
never bathed in the ocean," to England. Later 
on the Massilians had ventured farther into 
the Forth Sea in search of furs and amber; 
and the Eomans had reached the far Baltic. 
The Western Islands were known, there had 
been explorations down the coast of Africa, 
and, though the Mediterranean people knew 
it not, the Northmen had sailed in their open 
boats to Iceland, Greenland, and thence on 
down the American coast. But no European 
of the Continent as yet knew the western 
shores of the Atlantic or so much as dreamed 
of the vast new world. 

How very strange that after centuries of 
association the knowledge of the sea's ex- 
tent should have been so limited! The earth 
was round in spite of what the Papacy might 
think and many navigators believed it in the- 
ory; but where was the heroic soul to put it 
to the proof ! And was it a round of earth or 



THE DISCOVERY 



11 



merely endless water? There were whispers 
of a vast sea to the west where ships, entrapped 
in fields of sea weed — caught like flies within 
a mesh — could neither go forward nor back- 
ward, but perished miserably. Was all the 
waste where the sun went down of that com- 
plexion? No one knew; no one could say. 
And no one cared to be the first to venture. 
The sea had grown familiar since Phoenician 
days, but it still had its terrors. 

At last Columbus ! Whatever else he was or 
was not, however just the criticisms of those 
scientific historians who would read flaws in 
his title to fame, at least he was no coward. 
He put courage in his purse the day he faced 
the western ocean. Calmly he sailed beyond 
the " Blessed Islands " of the Greeks, beyond 
"the extremities of the West and East" of 
Aratus, beyond "the green earth's utmost 
bounds " of Homer. He did not know what 
perils might confront him. Dangers of tem- 
pest, of maelstrom, of evil spirits, of the 
world's ending-place were about him; but he 
held his course. The Sargasso Sea enmeshed 
him, his guiding stars forsook him, his com- 
pass apparently swerved from the pole, his crew 
grew mutinous; but he would not turn back. 
Ah ! the supreme fortitude of that man sailing 



Tales of the 

Western 

Ocean. 



First voyage 
of Colum- 
bus. 



Courage of 
Columbus. 



Jl. 



w 



MMMH 



12 



THE OPAL SEA 



The new 
world. 



Balboa and 
the Pacific. 



week after week into the unknown with nothing 
to support him but his own stout heart! 

Success came when defeat was almost an 
accomplished fact. A new world had been dis- 
covered and given to Castile and Leon, but 
Columbus never for a moment imagined it was 
anything other than the western portion of the 
old world. The most that he sought was a 
shorter route to India by way of China. He 
thought he had discovered the outlying islands 
of Asia. No one had so much as imagined the 
presence of the two Americas or the infinity 
of waters that far beyond reached to the sun- 
set lands of Cathay. 

A few years later what must have been Bal- 
boa's wonder 

"when with eagle eyes 

He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise 

Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

The Pacific was before him — the Pacific, whose 
farthest limits are mystery even to this day, 
lay shimmering in the sunshine. It would be 
strange, indeed, if such a sight had not given 
him pause. There is that in immensity which 
commands respect and something in vast ex- 
panses of light and color that makes for rever- 
ence. Certain it is that if one have any finer 



THE DISCOVERY 



13 



feeling in his soul, it will come bubbling to the 
surface when he sees for the first time the 
Pacific. The discoverers were men of iron, but 
they were moved. Balboa wading waist deep 
into the water, sword and shield in hand, and 
claiming the great sea for Spain — Spain that 
to-day can claim nothing there — was he not 
pathetic in his earnestness? And the stanch 
Magellan, he who after many struggles finally 
burst through the straits that bear his name, 
shed tears as the majestic waters swam into his 
ken. Stout conquerors they were, but in the 
presence of the Southern Ocean small wonder 
that, for the moment, they felt themselves the 
conquered. 

They were brothers of one blood — Columbus, 
Balboa, and Magellan. Courage and grim de- 
termination were theirs, and all were such stuff 
as heroes are made of. Once through the 
straits Magellan headed across the wide sea, 
and nothing could make him change his course. 
Starvation and disease went with him, but he 
never swerved. For more than ten thousand 
miles he sailed without knowing if he should 
ever again see the mainland rise up from the 
ocean's rim. Three months and twenty days he 
fought down fear, and in all that time never 
a glimpse of any land, save two small unin- 



Effect of the 
South Sea 
upon its 
discoverers. 



Magellan 
around the 
world. 



. 



r 



14 



THE OPAL SEA 



Extent of 
the sea. 



The vast 
Pacific. 



habited islands ! How often he must have been 
harrowed by the thought that perhaps the the- 
ories were wrong, that possibly the world was 
not round but an unending reach of water upon 
which he had gone too far ever to return ! To 
be lost on the land, in forest or on mountain, is 
discouraging enough; but to be lost on the Pa- 
cific, in 1520 — that is quite another affair. 

Eratosthenes was right; the earth was a 
globe. But what philosopher ever imagined 
that it was so large ! Homer was right when 
he sang of the "mighty flood," but he was 
thinking of the insignificant Mediterranean. 
What poet had imagination enough to picture 
the vastness of the Pacific ! Many had surmised 
the truth but none had realized its extent. 
When the caravels of Columbus had sailed and 
returned the wise ones of the Eenaissance were 
astonished by the story brought home. It 
seemed impossible that there could be so much 
water. And still the girth of the seas was 
uncomprehended. It was only when Ma- 
gellan's Santa Vittoria had circumnavigated 
the globe and dropped anchor in the bay of San 
Lucar that a realization of the world of water 
began to dawn. The Atlantic was astonishing 
enough in all conscience; but the Pacific was 
overwhelming and dumbfounding. 



THE DISCOVERY 



15 



Men knew at last whither the sea led travel- 
ing to the east or the west; but toward the 
poles still dwelt mystery. The valorous were 
eager enough to explore seas and coasts now 
that they were sure of finding land if they kept 
on sailing to the west. Portuguese carracks, 
Spanish galleons, English fleets went scurrying 
hither and thither, claiming land in the names 
of their sovereigns and fighting with each other 
for the possession of what they could not hold. 
Scores of voyages were undertaken; the Cabots 
along the North American coast, Pizarro and 
Valdivia on the Pacific, Willoughby and Davis 
toward the North Pole, Cortereal, Frobischer, 
Hawkins, and Ealeigh in different directions, 
on conquest or discovery bent. At the south 
the Brazilian and African coasts were explored, 
Drake again circumnavigated the globe, and 
with Cook the South Sea became better under- 
stood. The geographical limits of the ocean 
were then tentatively fixed upon the map; and 
that outline has not been greatly changed in 
these later days. 

Long after the passing of the explorers, the 
slavers and the gold seekers, long after the 
period of discovery in the large, came the sci- 
entific exploration of the sea. This included 
not only the accurate charting of the great 



Voyages of 
exploration 
and con- 
guest. 



Geograph- 
ical limits 
attained. 



16 



THE OPAL SEA 



Charting of 
the sea. 



Scientific 
study of the 
ocean. 



waters with their islands, reefs, and shoals, 
but the sounding of the depths and the map- 
ping of the ocean bed twenty thousand feet 
below the surface; not only the study of its 
winds and calms but the movements of its cur- 
rents and the changes in its density and tem- 
perature. Since the eighteenth century began, 
all features of the ocean — from its coral islands 
built up to its rocky shores pulled down, from 
the glowing equator producing the energy of 
the great sea currents to the icy poles whose 
chilling streams restore the equilibrium, from 
the tides that swell the bays and harbors to 
the evaporation that drinks at the sea's surface 
— have been pried into and exploited. As for 
the color and light of the wave, its rise and 
fall and motion, they are no longer mysteries; 
the flora of the shallows and the fauna of the 
depths have been classified; 'and even the 
minute forms of life that show only as phos- 
phorescence upon the sea's surface have come 
under the microscope, have been analyzed and 
differentiated in the laboratory. 

Apparently all is known to us and the sea 
has no further secrets to reveal. And yet in 
a vague way we feel sure we are only on the 
threshold of its understanding. The story of 
creation becomes more intricate as we advance. 



THE DISCOVERT 



17 



For perhaps the sea is the one original element 
and out of it have come all the others. In its 
depths far down in the chill waters beyond 
our light and beyond our life, the rock strata 
of the earth may have been molded into shape. 
Centuries of time would have passed while the 
outworn shells of sea life were falling from the 
surface to the bottom and, with meteoric iron 
and star dust, forming the body of the rock 
strata. Centuries again would have passed 
while the slow-moving water was rubbing the 
strata into form and pressing it into substance 
by its enormous weight. At last, when its time 
was come, perhaps the great sea bed began to 
rise. The lateral pressure of the earth's crust 
forced it upward inch by inch, foot by foot, 
through a long series of years until finally the 
black slimy nose of the bed emerged from 
the water and became an island. Another age 
and the island had become a portion of a con- 
tinent, and had baked hard and dry in the 
sunlight. Still another age and perhaps the 
nose had lifted into a mountain ridge, wearing 
away by erosion, and thus finding its way by 
the rivers back to its early home in the sea.* 

* Such was the theory of science only a few years ago, 
but to-day the scientists are beginning to modify this 
view a little as regards the abysmal depths, while main- 



The origi- 
nal element. 



Forming of 
rock layers 
in the sea 
bed. 






18 



THE OPAL SEA 



Origin of 
life. 



The organic 
in the in- 
organic. 



Not the dry land alone but the life of the 
globe, did it not also come up and out of the 
sea? Oceanus was the parent of the gods. 
He was the beginner, the original, from which 
all things sprang. Merely a pretty myth, it 
may be said. Yes, but myths are incorporated 
traditions — early beliefs of mankind. Per- 
haps there was a time when there was naught 
but the omnipresent sea, circling as a flashing 
ball in the solar system. Perhaps it was then 
a mass of life, and there was no inorganic mat- 
ter existent until some of that life began to 
die. The skeletons of the dead that sank 
through the waters and hardened in a mass at 
the center, were the first formed strata of the 
solid earth. The trail of the organic is still 
apparent in the inorganic. Leonardo da Vinci 
recognized the sediment of the sea in the shell 
layers of the Apennines; and the blocks of the 
Colosseum at Rome, the pyramids at Ghizeh, 
still show these minute shells under the micro- 
scope. The Alps and the Andes are but so 
much hardened ocean ash, and perhaps the 

taming the give and take of land and sea as regards the 
shallower depths. That our present dry land was once 
under the sea is hardly to be questioned, but that the 
present deep sea bed has ever been thrust up into land 
is open to doubt. 



THE DISCOVERY 



19 



whole earth is but the compact mold of dead 
things. 

When Michelet revived this idea of Thales 
that the sea was the beginning of life, that its 
very atmosphere, so to speak, was an opalescent 
mucus, alive and capable of development in it- 
self, the thought was considered somewhat fan- 
tastic ; but since then have not the scientists put 
hands upon this very conception and used it 
as an illustration in argument? Is not the 
opalescent mucus of Michelet the protoplasm 
of the evolutionist? And the sea is filled with 
it. Often when sailing in the tropics the 
watcher lying along the bowsprit sees down 
through the blue-green water drifts and skeins 
without number of this thin mucilage, reced- 
ing by steps into the abyss and extending for 
many miles in every direction. The poles pos- 
sess it in common with the tropics. The sea 
life lives upon it and is perhaps bred from it. 
It is the lowest form of life. No other ele- 
ment than water could produce it or support it 
in such quantity. 

And yet with these powers of life, these po- 
tentialities of creation, how sublimely uncon- 
scious in its workings seems the sea ! Great 
spawns of life go out from it, species by the 
hundreds of thousands; they disappear like 



Michelet 
and the 
evolution- 



Mucus and 
protoplasm. 



20 



THE OPAL SEA 



The uncon- 
scious sea. 



Laws of 
life and 
death. 



Earth 
broods. 



mists in the sun, they reappear like mists; but 
their coming and their going are one and the 
same thing to the great Mother. Never has 
she done more for her offspring than to give it 
facilities for existing and expedients against 
sudden death. Each one of her children has 
its peculiar adaptation enabling it to seek and 
gather food and brave its enemies by feint or 
flight or breed. But having once fitted them 
for the conflict she abandons each species to its 
fate, leaving it to live or die as it may or must. 
The equipment of the flying fish, the octopus, 
the sea lily, the common kelp, is each complete 
in itself; therefore, let each work out its own 
salvation or destruction. Death is not the un- 
expected. All through the kingdom of the sea 
some must die that others may live. Continu- 
ally is life sustained by life destroyed. It is 
the law of being and the Mother of the Wave 
Myriads never puts forth a hand to restrain or 
check it. She is wholly indifferent. 

For the creatures of the land — the creatures 
not of her spawning except perhaps in the early 
days — the sea has, if possible, even less care. 
They belong to a different brood and have no 
adaptation to the water. They cannot swim in 
the depths, they are not able to breathe the 
ocean atmosphere, and the food of the ocean 



THE DISCOVEKT 



21, 



plains they gather only by strategy from the 
surface. The sea knows them not. 

Above all she never knew man — the most un- 
seaworthy of all the earth-brood. He has fan- 
cied that she was his enemy, that she wilfully 
devastated his coasts and destroyed his fleets; 
but the sea indifferently beats whither it listeth, 
and if it break the ribs of a ship it shows only 
how ill adapted was the ship to the sea. What 
does a cockle shell in such an element? All 
man's commerce and conquest, all his ventures 
in civilization, all his philosophy, science, and 
art have been as nothing unto her. He has 
sent forth fleets of triremes, carracks, feluccas, 
galleons, ships of the line; he has founded em- 
pires by her shores and peopled cities by her 
bays; but these have made no impression upon 
her. The destruction of Egypt and Assyria, 
the fall of Tyre and Sidon, the conquests of 
Alexander, the vast holocaust of Eome never 
so much as caused her a quiver. Her waves 
lapped the blood from the steps of Carthage in 
the days of Hamilcar and lapped the weed on 
the same steps when all was silent in decay. 
Her waters bore the transports of the believing 
crusaders going to the Holy Land, and they 
also bore the black fleets of the Barbary cor- 
sairs on robbery and murder bent. What mat- 



The sea's 
indifference 
to man. 



22 



THE OPAL SEA 



Wrecks of 
ships and 
empires 
make no 
impression. 



Repose of 
the sea. 



ter to the sea who they were or whither they 
went ! A thousand ships go down to the bot- 
tom as snow flakes fall and melt into a moun- 
tain lake, but the sea does not change color. 
She is inured to life; yes, and she is inured to 
death. All things of earth may come and go. 
But the sea lasts. There as at the dawning of 
the first day the great Mother rests, calm, cold, 
unconquerable. 

Yet men quarrel for her possession and talk 
vainly of being " rulers of the wave/' as though 
the sea were more subject to rule than the open 
sky ! One race of coasters drives another race 
from the pathway of commerce and thinks 
thereby to gain control. But power and mys- 
tery and death are still there. Vast possibili- 
ties are always hovering on the face of the 
waters. For many years the waves lie still and 
seem to slumber and then in a night they rise 
up in storm to engulf and strangle. It is but 
a momentary happening — a mere accident. An 
area of water is wrinkled by the winds and 
other portions of the sea are not even aware 
of it. The great depths are as unruffled as 
ever. At heart eternal calmness, serene repose 
are always with the sea. 

And always eternal beauty. In every clime 
and in every season, from dawn to dusk, from 



THE DISCOVERY 



23 



dusk to dawn, it has the stamp of supreme 
beauty. Immensity and power are there, grace 
and rhythm of movement run with its waves 
and currents, light and color give it brilliancy 
and splendor. Each wind that ruffles it shows 
a new purity of hue, and each cloud that passes 
over it a new depth of reflection. The rounded 
heavens use it as a mirror, the stars are set 
like jewel points upon its bosom, and the golden 
sun flames from the bright incline of each 
ocean swell like a mighty topaz shot with fire. 
Oh, the beauty of the sea! The full-rounded 
sweep of it ! The deep transparency of it ! 
The wondrous harmony of it ! The whole life 
of the world lies there conserved by its own 
energy — serene, indestructible, eternal. 



The beauty 
of the sea. 



CHAPTEK II 



SWIRLS OF THE SEA 



Currents of 
the sea. 



The ancient tradition that a great river in 
the sea ran about the land, circling it like a 
ring, seems to the people of to-day an apt in- 
stance of early error; and yet it was not such 
a wild conjecture, not so far from the apparent 
truth. Off from the western coasts of Europe 
and Africa the Phoenicians knew the currents 
of the ocean that helped or hindered their far- 
traveling ships. They knew there was a vast 
circulation through the seas; and wherever on 
distant island shores their vessels touched they 
heard tales told of the blue beyond with its 
mighty streams eddying about rocks or whirling 
downward into maelstrom depths. These tales 
(grown colossal by frequent tellings) finally be- 
came beliefs with the primitive races ; the ocean 
was regarded as an unending strom, and the 
land little more than a tangible something an- 
chored in the center of the swirl. It was a 
very little world, a 

" precious stone set in the silver sea " 

with wild waves fretting at its edges. 
24 



SWIELS OF THE SEA 



25 



Even at the present time humanity has dif- 
ficulty in comprehending that the earth is solid, 
that it is far greater in bulk than the sea, and 
that its hollows and depressions hold the sea 
as in a shallow dish. Superficially looked at 
the water has many times the bulk of the 
dish, but not the less it is the dish that 
sustains. It holds the water and holds it with 
a flat surface. When the wind blows the surface 
is ruffled; when the dish itself is shaken the 
water is rocked into tidal waves. But these are 
momentary disturbances. Generally speaking 
the surface is smooth and practically flat. 

Flat but not everywhere level though it looks 
so to the eye. In sea musings when gazing out 
upon the great plain we are continually re- 
minded of the saying about " water seeking its 
level " ; but it would seem as though the saying 
were more familiar than accurate. There is, 
for instance, a variation between the levels (not 
the tides) of the Atlantic and the Pacific at 
Panama which has been vaguely regarded as a 
possible difficulty in the way of the proposed 
inter-oceanic canal. There is also considerable 
variation in the mean sea level owing to dif- 
ference in atmospheric pressure over differ- 
ent localities. And again local disturbances 
such as winds, may alter the level tempo- 



Extent of 
land and 
water. 



Sea level 



26 



THE OPAL SEA 



Disturb- 
ances of 
the level. 



Effect of 
earth's at- 
traction. 



rarily. The height of the Eed Sea is low- 
ered or elevated as the northwest wind blows 
the water out of the sea basin or not, the estu- 
ary of the Eio de la Plata is continually vary- 
ing in level with the direction of the wind; 
and, indeed, it is a commonly observed happen- 
ing for water to be wind-driven in or out of 
almost all bays and harbors. But these again 
are inequalities of a temporary character. 

There is a greater variation in the Indian 
Ocean around the head of the Arabian Sea, 
where the water is supposed to be drawn up and 
out of the spherical by so much as three hun- 
dred feet — it is computed by some scientists as 
even more. This almost incredible elevation is 
accounted for by the attraction of the Hima- 
layas. Possibly the Andes, that stand with their 
feet in the ocean, produce a similar effect upon 
the waters of the Pacific ; but certainly the man 
before the mast has never seen it, and the 
navigator in the chart room has never made 
note of it. Nor is there any great certainty 
about the upward pull of the Himalayas. That 
the hydrosphere is drawn out of the spherical 
by earth-attraction, or flung up in equatorial 
ridges by the spinning motion of the earth, is 
something as yet quite problematical. 

The change of level brought about by the 



SWIRLS OF THE SEA 



27 



tides is popularly supposed to be a surface 
movement, but it is not the less of far-reaching 
effect. Possibly the tide was what Mahomet 
called "the swelling sea/' for apparently the 
sea does swell and advance with the incoming 
water. For six hours it floods in upon every 
harbor, bay, and creek, creeps up the beaches, 
rises along the dunes, and climbs the walls of 
the cliffs; then for six hours, just as quietly it 
ebbs and slips away from beach and inlet, 
leaving its trail of algce and sea life behind it 
on the shore. The fisher-boy, as he rocks in 
his boat, watches it rise twice each day, sees 
it linger for a time, sees it disappear, and 
dreamily wonders from what depth it came and 
to what abyss it returns. And why, he asks, 
does it come in each day an hour later? 

The cause of the tides seems to have been 
correctly divined by Newton. His generaliza- 
tion of the law of gravitation apparently ac- 
counts for the disturbance; and the moon and 
the sun with their attractive powers are ac- 
counted the disturbers. The moon, by reason 
of its nearness, has an influence upon the earth 
of more than double that of the sun. The 
solid surface of the ground apparently does not 
rise to its attraction, but the waters of the sea 
do. The direct pull upon the waters which are 



The swell- 
ing sea. 



The tides. 



Cause of 



28 



THE OPAL SEA 



The attrac- 
tion of the 
moon 



High and 
low tides 



the nearest to the moon, draws them out of the 
spherical on the near side of the earth, and 
draws the earth itself away from the waters 
on the far side. The result is a bulge or heap- 
ing up of water along those portions of the 
earth nearest and farthest removed from the 
moon. At the intermediate points, between the 
nearest and farthest remove, the pull of the 
moon is a force directed inward toward the cen- 
ter of the earth, and has a tendency to flatten 
the waters in those regions. The result here is 
a depression or hollowing instead of a bulge. 
Thus with the water high in the places nearest 
and farthest from the moon, and low at the 
intermediate points, we have the sea raised 
above its normal level in some places and de- 
pressed below its normal level at other places. 
These elevations and depressions are what we 
call " high " and " low " tide. 

There are really four tides a day instead of 
two — the moon and the sun causing two tides 
each. But the solar tides are so much smaller 
than the lunar, and so largely merged in the lat- 
ter, that they are not usually noticed. The in- 
fluence of the sun is very noticeable, however, 
when it joins with the moon (that is twice a 
month) and there is a pull together. This re- 
sults in the " spring " tides which are always 



SWIRLS OF THE SEA 



29 



very high. On the contrary, when the pull of 
the sun and the moon are at right angles to 
each other (that is at the first and third quar- 
ter of the moon) and have a tendency to coun- 
teract each other's influence, we have the 
" neap " tides which are always low. 

If the globe were entirely covered with water 
of uniform depth the tide would follow the 
apparent course of the moon from east to west 
and complete the circle of the globe in ap- 
proximately twenty-four hours. That is what 
it endeavors to do now; and in the Antarctic, 
south of the Continental extremities of Aus- 
tralia and America, it is supposed to accom- 
plish it. But farther north, where humanity 
is able to observe its movements, it is held back 
and turned from its course by inequalities of 
ocean depths, by shoals and reefs and coast 
lines along continents, so that it takes nearly 
twenty-five hours to accomplish its round, and 
hence arrives an hour late each day. 

What is known as the " primary tide " is 
supposed to start from the deep central waters 
of the Pacific. It travels westward toward the 
Indian and Atlantic oceans at the rate of a 
thousand miles an hour. When it meets with 
the opposition of shallow seas and coast lines 
portions of it are turned back, reflected toward 



Spring and 
neap tides. 



The west- 
ern wave. 



30 



THE OPAL SEA 



How the 
tide travels. 



Height of 
tide wave. 



the American continent. In the Indian Ocean 
it is greatly retarded by island groups and nar- 
row straits. In the North Atlantic it is broken 
again by shoals, by pockets like the Gulf of 
Mexico, and passes like the English Channel, 
until its movement as a single effect can hardly 
be followed. 

From its enormous mass and rapid move- 
ment this tide wave might be thought to have 
great height, but such is not the case. In the 
Southern Pacific it does not average more than 
from two to five feet, and that may be consid- 
ered its normal height; but when a tide five 
feet in height is driven against a shore at the 
rate of one thousand or even one hundred miles 
an hour, it can be easily imagined that there 
would be a great rush of waters up the slope. 
The eastern coast of North America which re- 
ceives the full force of the Atlantic wave, has 
a tide of from five to twelve feet; and its bays 
and river mouths, where the water enters at 
wide entrances and is gradually driven into a 
narrow upper harbor, have a flood tide much 
higher. At the mouth of the Bay of Fundy 
the tide is eight feet in height; at its farther 
end this same tide is wedged and pushed up to 
a height of sixty feet or more. In the Bristol 
channel the flood tides reach up forty feet, 



SWIELS OF THE SEA 



31 



and on the coast of France even higher than 
this. 

On the contrary the large bays or seas with 
small ocean entrances, like the Mediterranean, 
are not affected by the main tide waves, but 
have slight tides of their own. At Corfu or 
Malta, the Mediterranean is practically tide- 
less, but at Venice, at the head of the Adriatic, 
where there is a heap-up of waters, one finds 
a foot or more of rise, and in the Gulf of Gades 
from three to eight feet owing to the formation 
of the coast. Even comparatively small seas or 
lakes are disturbed by the moon and have some 
tide — Lake Michigan, for example, rising and 
falling about three inches a day. 

Many, if not all, the phenomena of rushing 
water in river mouths or about reefs or narrow 
channels are due to the action of the tides. 
The famous maelstrom off the coast of Nor- 
way, which the writers of an earlier day em- 
ployed so successfully in fiction, is really only 
an arm of the tide thrust violently between two 
of the Lofoden Islands, and causing a whirl- 
pool which is reversed at every new rising. It 
is said to be very impressive as seen from the 
cliff of Voero looking down clear and sheer, 
and to be forceful enough to carry down whales 
in its funnel; but the tremendous whirl of 



Tide in in- 
land seas. 



The Nor- 
wegian 
maelstrom. 



32 



THE OPAL SEA 



Scylla and 
Charybdis. 



Races and 
whirlpools. 



water fancied by Poe never had an existence 
in fact. 

Tidal currents are responsible for all the 
fearsome whirlpools of antiquity. Scylla and 
Charybdis, 

" The implacable Charybdis lashing the stars with its 
waves" 

are still to be seen in the Straits of Messina. 
The agitation of the water is caused by the ebb 
and flow of tides through a narrow channel; 
and, though it is said to be dangerous to small 
craft, we are told that the conquerors of Sicily, 
more than once, swam their horses through it. 
The eddy of the Strait of Euripus, near the 
island of Eubcea, that in the Gulf of Bothnia, 
or the swift currents like the Blanchard Eace 
which Victor Hugo employs in his Travail- 
leurs de la Mer, are all caused by high tides 
that produce tide rips and funnel-shaped 
whirls. 

These races and whirlpools are interesting 
to follow because there is nothing more fasci- 
nating than the slip and glide of water, and 
even the come and go of the tide on the beach 
has a charm to those who watch; but they are 
usually not so dangerous as they look. To be 
sure " the hungry tide " — though it never hun- 



SWIRLS OF THE SEA 



33 



gers — has been held responsible for many a 
sad sea-tale due to human carelessness; but the 
ordinary tide is quite harmless and floods in as 
softly as the moonlight over sunset prairies. 

This, however, cannot always be said about 
the most violent of the tidal manifestations as 
seen in the mouths of certain rivers. A 
" bore " is not only fascinating but it may 
be very dangerous to shipping. It is usually 
caused by the inward rush of the tide water 
opposing the slow outward movement of the 
river water. The tide is at first driven in and 
wedged to a great height by the narrowing 
shores. It then encounters the river water, 
pushes it up to a flattened angle, and finally 
breaks over it and on it with a foam, a dash, 
and a roar. It may take other forms from 
other causes, but it is usually a breaker, not 
dashing up the beach, but dashing up the river 
mouth over the water of the river. Sometimes, 
as at the final exit of the Colorado, this breaker 
comes forward with great power. At the mouth 
of the Amazon it reaches a height of sixteen 
feet (it is said to be even higher) and the bores 
of the Tsien-Tang-Kiang and the Ganges are 
both famous and dreaded. For the breaker 
whether upon the bay or upon the coast has a 
crushing blow that ribs of steel and walls of 



The 
" bore.' 



"Bores" of 
the Colorado 
and the 
Amazon. 



34 



THE OPAL SEA 



Tidal 
waves. 



Great 
waves in 
the Pacific. 



rock will not always withstand. The force of 
water is almost incalculable. 

There is another wave occasionally seen on 
the ocean that is called a " tidal wave " though 
it has nothing whatever to do with the tide. 
It is usually a wide, far-traveling undulation 
set in motion by some shock to the sea basin 
such as an earthquake. These subterranean 
disturbances sometimes spread over a vast area 
and set in motion waves that travel thousands 
of miles with wonderful velocity. In 1877 one 
of these waves started on the Peruvian coast of 
South America, swept across the Pacific five 
thousand miles to Hawaii, and even at that 
distance maintained a rise and fall of some 
thirty-six feet from trough to crest. This was 
not so great as the earthquake wave of 1868 
which, from the same region, traveled the Pa- 
cific in a curved ring of perhaps eight thousand 
miles in length — traveled at the rate of five 
hundred miles an hour — and ran up on shores 
ten thousand miles away with a breaker crest 
thirty feet in height. 

The distance which waves will travel when 
set in motion by violent disturbances is, again, 
something almost incalculable. The explosion 
of Krakatoa in 1883 produced ocean ridges one 
hundred feet in height that rode over the 



SWIRLS OF THE SEA 



35 



neighboring islands, and were felt on the 
shores of South America thousands of miles 
away. The Telocity of these waves was sev- 
eral hundred miles an hour — not equal to the 
air waves set in motion by the same shock be- 
cause impeded by islands, continental shores, 
and shallow waters; yet still an amazing rate 
of speed. The waves themselves for all their 
destructiveness must have been wonderful walls 
of water — upright walls almost like those 
thrown to the left and right when Israel passed 
through the Eed Sea, dark blue walls as though 
fashioned from lapis-lazuli, walls crested with 
dazzling white avalanches of foam, continually 
curling and breaking along the blue apex. 

Of course it would be quite impossible for 
water itself to travel at any such terrific pace 
as five hundred miles an hour, and from the 
phrase " a wave travels " it must not be in- 
ferred that there is an actual movement or 
translation of, say, Pacific water to the shores 
of the Atlantic. The movement is apparent 
only; not real. It is the undulation that trav- 
els, not the water. A ship on the surface of a 
swift-moving wave does not drive ahead. It 
merely rises as the wave passes under, and falls 
as it passes out and away. The wind passing 
over the tall grain stalks in a Minnesota wheat 



Krakatoa. 



Waves 
from the 
explosion 



The travel 
of waves. 



36 



THE OPAL SEA 



Undula- 
tion. 



Drift of 
water. 



Drift of 
wreckage. 



field produces a wave in the stalks correspond- 
ing to the undulation of the sea, but the stalks 
do not move forward. Undulation and advance 
are not the same things. 

There is, however, what is called " drift " 
which, as applied to sea water, means an ad- 
vance. With wind and wave continually press- 
ing against it, water will slowly " drift " from 
one portion of the ocean to another. Floating 
substances such as the loose planks of a ship, 
abandoned at sea, sooner or later find their way 
to the shore, to be eventually entombed in 
waves of sand; and the bottle with its fateful 
message from the lost, is perhaps picked up five 
thousand miles from where the waves first re- 
ceived it. But this drift of the sea is a very 
slow movement. For days the bottle bobs and 
pitches, the wreckage swings up and down, with 
wave following wave, and neither seems to 
change its place. Prevailing winds push them 
some, and finally a great storm sweeps them 
into an ocean current. They move slowly even 
there, but it is largely due to ocean currents 
that floating objects move at all. 

Now the ocean current that weaves a skein 
of color through the body of the sea, is quite 
a different affair from tide or wave or undula- 
tion. It is a distinct movement forward — a 



SWIRLS OF THE SEA 



37 



river in the sea that sometimes flows at the rate 
of two or three miles an hour and flows for 
several thousand miles before disintegrating. 
The violet-blue Gulf Stream of the Atlantic 
is a typical example. It starts in the central 
Atlantic somewhere off the coast of Brazil, 
passes northwest into the Gulf of Mexico, 
thence up the North American coast and across 
toward Europe. In the Florida Pass it is fifty 
miles wide and very swift ; at Hatteras it broad- 
ens and slackens; on the Banks it spreads out 
fan-like, is met by the cold Arctic currents and 
pushed eastward toward Great Britain and 
France.* A disintegrated remnant of it is 
drawn in upon and down the coast of Spain, 
back to its original starting point, thus making 
that great pool in the Atlantic called the " Sar- 
gasso Sea." It was this enormous slow-moving 
eddy — the great Gulf Swirl — that so fright- 
ened the companions of Columbus by its drifts 
of weed gathered and held in the central por- 
tion of the pool. Long after the passing of 

* There are those who deny that the Gulf Stream 
passes as far north as England or that it reaches Europe 
at all. It undoubtedly dissipates to a great extent at or 
near the Banks of Newfoundland, but that its warmth 
and waters reach and influence Great Britain and be- 
yond is still believable. 



Ocean 
currents. 



The Gulf 
Stream. 



38 



THE OPAL SEA 



The Japa- 
nese 
current. 



Other ocean 
currents. 



the discoverer, navigators still thought that no 
ship could pass through it or get clear of 
entanglements when once caught in that mesh 
of yellow-brown Gulf weed. 

The Kuro Sivo or Japanese Current in the 
Pacific is the counterpart of the Gulf Stream. 
It starts in substantially the same way, swings 
up the coast of Japan and eastward across the 
Pacific to the Aleutian Islands and the coast 
of Alaska. Its effect upon Northwestern 
America is to make of the climate a something 
akin in dampness and fogs to that of Great 
Britain and Norway. A branch of this cur- 
rent turns down the coast of California, creat- 
ing another Sargasso Sea in the Pacific, and 
making of California a climate somewhat like 
that of Spain. 

These are the two currents with which the 
sailor has the most familiarity, but there are 
many others put down upon the charts of the 
Pacific and Indian oceans. The larger ones 
are the South Equatorial and Australian cur- 
rents, the Brazilian, the Mozambique and the 
Monsoon Drift. Comparatively smaller are the 
Agulhas Current that sweeps westward around 
the Cape of Good Hope, and the Guinea Cur- 
rent, either of which, though slight by compari- 
son, is mighty enough to command respect. 



SWIRLS OF THE SEA 



39 



What wide rivers of the sea run in the great 
Antarctic has not been revealed ; and yet, so far 
as discovery has gone, the whole surface of the 
waters seems in motion with dark blue or gray- 
green currents, going hither and thither, back- 
ward and forward, seeking a resting place and 
never finding it. The direction, force, and 
speed of the currents are constant in only a 
very general way. Tin^e was when they were 
considered as unvarying in their movements 
as the flow of the Amazon or the Rhine; but it 
is now known that they are subject to many 
vicissitudes, dependent upon propelling forces 
that are continually changing. 

These rivers of the sea early gave rise to 
strange stories about their origins, their violent 
entrances and exits, and the supernatural pow- 
ers behind them. Even so late as the middle of 
the seventeenth century Kircher suggested that 
they were caused by a circulation of the waters 
through a great tunnel in the axis of the earth. 
He thought that the northern drift of the Gulf 
Stream was the inward draft of the Norwegian 
maelstrom, that the sea waters went whirling 
down the great eddy, passed through the earth, 
and were spouted out again in the whirlpool of 
the Gulf of Bothnia. This same Gulf Stream 
drift was believed by geographers in the eigh- 



Variations 
of currents. 



Early be- 
liefs about 
ocean cur- 
rents. 



40 



THE OPAL SEA 



Franklin 
and Maury. 



The Trade 
Winds. 



teenth century to be influenced by the move- 
ment of the sun, and by others to be a contin- 
uation of the flow of the Mississippi Kiver; 
but our wise Dr. Franklin made a more com- 
mon-sense explanation in saying it was caused 
by the Trade Winds forcing the sea water into 
the Gulf of Mexico and that its outward flow 
was but the natural working of the law of 
gravity. When the further common-sense of 
Lieutenant Maury was applied to the ocean cur- 
rents there was no longer any place for specula- 
tion or superstition. 

Perhaps the chief cause of all ocean circula- 
tion is the prevailing winds. By long and 
steady pressure of the winds exerted upon the 
surface of the waters the upper stratum is 
forced into a sluggish movement which gradu- 
ally increases in velocity until a well-estab- 
lished bent or direction is given to it. The 
current thus set in motion is not deep. On 
the contrary, it is a surface drift which affects 
the intermediate depths but slightly, and the 
great depths probably not at all. The winds 
that produce the chief currents are the well- 
known Trades that blow steadily across the 
Atlantic from east to west. In the Northern 
hemisphere they are turned to the north and 
flow back in a counter current to the east; in 



SWIELS OF THE SEA 



41 



the Southern hemisphere they are turned to 
the south and again find their way back to the 
east. The movement is substantially the same 
in the Pacific. The general westward move- 
ment prevails, and the winds are again turned 
back at the north and the south. 

The main ocean currents follow, as closely 
as is possible for them, the directions of these 
Trade Winds and seem to correspond with 
them in many ways. In the Atlantic the South 
Equatorial Current flows to the west pushed 
by the Southeast Trades. When it meets the 
coast of Brazil part of it is shunted off south 
to make the Brazilian Current and part of it 
goes to the north, enters the Gulf of Mexico, 
and with the North Equatorial Current after- 
ward emerges as the Gulf Stream. Substan- 
tially the same thing takes place in the Pacific. 
The North Equatorial Current flowing west 
meets the Philippines and other islands, is bent 
northward, and finally flows eastward as the 
Japanese Current; the South Equatorial Cur- 
rent bends south and east as the East Austra- 
lian Current. All these currents eventually re- 
turn upon themselves and complete the circle. 
Moreover, they all have counter-drifts running 
in opposite directions that help restore the 
equilibrium of the seas. 



Direction of 
the Trades. 



Ocean cur- 
rents follow 
winds. 



42 



THE OPAL SEA 



Circulation 
of the seas. 



Exchange of 
currents. 



" Horizontal circulation " is the name given 
to the movement of the well-defined surface 
currents; whereas the creep of scattered bodies 
of water up and down, here and there, is known 
as the "vertical circulation/' Possibly the one 
is but a slower manifestation of the other, and 
perhaps both have causes, aside from the steady 
blowing Trades, that contribute to the total 
result. One of these causes is undoubtedly dif- 
ference in gravity. The seas of the tropics, for 
instance, are subject to vastly more evapora- 
tion than those of the polar regions. There is 
more evaporation than rainfall, and, conse- 
quently, an ever-growing gravity and decreased 
bulk. At the poles, on the contrary, with much 
snow and ice continually melting and very lit- 
tle evaporation, there must be a tendency to 
freshness. This means decreased gravity and 
increased bulk. 

It is not possible for this difference between 
the polar and the equatorial waters to exist 
without an attempt at equalization. The great 
Leonardo argued that much long before the 
seas were charted or a theory of gravitation was 
advanced. The result of the attempt at equali- 
zation is an exchange, an interchange. The 
waters of the north and south work underneath 
by current, drift, and gradual " creep " toward 



SWIELS OF THE SEA 



43 



the equator ; and the waters of the equator work 
forever along the surface, moving outward tow- 
ard the poles. 

There is a similar interchange of waters by 
force of gravity in the majority of inland seas. 
The evaporation from the surface of the Eed 
Sea is estimated at eight solid feet a year, and 
from, the Mediterranean in corresponding pro- 
portion. This is enormous, and is not compen- 
sated for by a sufficient rainfall or inward 
river flow. Both seas would have crystalized 
into salt beds centuries ago were it not that 
through the Straits of Gibraltar and the Straits 
of Babel Mandeb a heavy salt water current 
goes out and a current of lighter, fresher water 
pours in. Even now the salinity of those seas 
is very high and the exchanging currents of 
water through the entrances are hard pushed to 
maintain normal conditions. 

In a like manner difference in temperature 
may be accounted a cause of sea currents — a 
contributory cause of difference in gravity. 
The body of heat must be equal to the body of 
cold, otherwise the sea would grow hotter or 
colder, just as the body of rainfall must equal 
the body of evaporation, otherwise the sea 
would grow less or greater. Wherever the one 
predominates it flows over and mingles with 



Interchange 
of waters in 
Red Sea 
and Medi- 
terranean. 



Difference 
in tempera- 
ture a cause 
of circula- 
tion 



44 



THE OPAL SEA 



Swirls and 
rings of 
the sea. 



Swirls of 
the air 



the other. In the process of exchange many- 
circles are drawn in the sea, and currents ver- 
tical, horizontal, and " creeping," come into 
existence. The waters of the tropics are 
warmed, raised to the surface, set in motion 
by the winds, pushed poleward, and finally re- 
turned upon themselves in a completed ring — 
a swirl of the sea. The waters at the poles 
are being chilled, sent down into the depths, 
passed on to the equator, raised up and set in 
motion poleward again — another ring, another 
swirl of the sea. Not here nor there, by the 
Atlantic or the Pacific, by continental shore 
or island archipelago is this exchange taking 
place, but all over, everywhere, continuously, 
unceasingly. It is a movement of the sea 
whereby its purity and vitality are maintained. 
Without it there would be stagnation and re- 
sultant destruction. 

Not the currents of the sea alone but those 
of the atmosphere are set in motion by heat 
and cold. The scorched air lying along the 
equatorial waters, grown volatile and capricious, 
eddies around and around and finally forms 
into hot winds that rise and flow out to the 
north and south, where they meet with colder 
winds coming down from the poles to take their 
place. They rise above the latter flowing pole- 



SWIRLS OF THE SEA 



45 



ward, become cooler, then descend and return 
to the equator as the cold air of the north or 
south. Again in these winds that parallel the 
ocean currents and, practically, are a part of 
them, there is a completed circle — a swirl of 
the air. And again is the very existence of 
the air and its life-giving properties to the 
earth maintained by this movement. Without 
the exchange of aerial temperatures one 
part of the earth would freeze while another 
part would burn, and all parts would event- 
ually perish from the violence of the ex- 
tremes. 

How different from this circulatory move- 
ment of our little world is the great elliptical 
swing of the solar system? Is there not a 
swirl of the universe as well as of the sea and 
air? And is it, too, not caused primarily by 
difference in temperature? The extremes of 
the equator and the poles are sufficient to set 
in motion thousands of miles of air and water ; 
but what is the heat of the equator to the blaze 
of the sun itself or the cold of the poles com- 
pared with the possible absolute zero of upper 
space? If the heat of the sun flows out (as 
we know it does) must not the cold of space 
flow in? On the tremendous currents thus set 
in motion would the planets of our solar sys- 



The life- 
giving prop- 
erty of 
change. 



Swirl of the 
solar system 



46 



THE OPAL SEA 



The Milky 
Way a Sar- 
gasso Sea. 



The search 
for truth. 



tern be any more than tennis balls floating in 
the maelstrom? 

Ours is but a single circle in space. For mil- 
lions of years perhaps we have been eddying 
slowly in a Sargasso Sea, seeing on the other 
side of the pool Jupiter and Saturn and Nep- 
tune whirling around the rim. It is but a 
little swirl in the universe, but had we but the 
eyes to see and the mind to grasp we should 
perhaps find it not different in principle from 
the greater swirl. That vast clustering star- 
belt which we call the Milky Way heaps up 
from our horizon to a glittering ring in the 
heavens. What it circles no one knows, but 
there is little doubt that it is a circle. What 
power swung that mighty swirl into motion? 
Where blazes the luminary that drives those 
stars together? Are they themselves the cen- 
tral dynamos of the universe, and are all the 
constellations that plunge hither and yon 
through space driven off upon great ellipses 
by their stupendous heat ? 

There is no answer. The great truths were 
evidently not meant for us. We have never 
been able to understand them. We grope 
blindly for causes, dragging to light plausible 
theories that last a little time and then go their 
way, being wholly insufficient. The long argu- 



SWIRLS OF THE SEA 



47 



ment of science but proves its weakness. If the 
truth is ever known there will be no need of 
demonstration, for everything in human ex- 
perience will immediately confirm it. 

But we have waited long for the truth-bearer 
to come. 



CHAPTEE III 



IN THE DEPTHS 



Superficial 
effect of 
storms. 



Shallowness 
of currents. 



The storms that sweep across the ocean 
plains — the storms that toss the ships and 
harry the coast and roar far inland through 
forests of pine and hemlock — have no more 
than a superficial effect upon the deep sea. 
The rough winds irritate the face but do not 
penetrate far beneath the skin. The hurricane 
of the North Atlantic or the cyclone of the In- 
dian Ocean may whip the surface into mist 
and foam, tear clouds of spray from the wave- 
crests, and, at times, darken the very sky with 
flying scud and rack; but, for lack of duration, 
never disturb the under-world of water, never 
so much as hint its presence to the great 
depths. 

Even the far-reaching currents, with their 
Amazonian flow through the blue-green ex- 
panse, are waters that do not run deep. 
They move forward, they have great breadth, 
and they reach down much farther than any 
storm agitation because of their weight and 
their continuance; but possibly two hundred 
48 



IN THE DEPTHS 



49 



fathoms would be their limit. The Gulf 
Stream is supposed to have onward movement 
at that depth though there is no great accuracy 
about either the observation or the calculation. 
Its flow is, of course, more rapid in some places 
than in others, and its deepest depth would 
probably be obtained in such passes as the 
Straits of Florida, where it is forced through 
a narrow defile; but on the Banks, where it 
flattens and spreads, it must be much shal- 
lower. As for the depth of the smaller ocean 
currents, probably a hundred fathoms would be 
an approximate estimate. When such a figure 
is considered in connection with the average 
depth of the ocean (about two thousand fath- 
oms), it will be readily seen that no ocean cur- 
rent more than scratches the surface of the 
great waters. 

The tides that move about the world used to 
be considered of superficial penetration also; 
but it has been matter of surprise more than 
once to find by casual observation how deep 
they reach. From steep cliffs looking down 
through clear water the rush of a four-foot tide 
can be seen swaying the sea weed a hundred 
and fifty feet below ; and in the harbors and in- 
lets the impetus of such a tide is felt to the very 
bottom. 



Currents 
merely 
scratch the 
surface. 



The depth 
of the 
tides. 



50 



THE OPAL SEA 



Tides not 
perceptible 
in mid- 



Tide 
theories. 



Tidal 
waves. 



In mid-ocean the tide is perhaps of less sig- 
nificance. On the surface it is not even no- 
ticed. The waters swell for six hours and con- 
tract for six more; but the open sea gives no 
indication of this and the ship we sail in has 
no perceptible rise or fall. Yet the tide comes 
and goes notwithstanding, and how deep its 
flood is not positively known. Who shall say 
that the great attraction of the moon pulls the 
surface of the waters out of the spherical but 
has no effect upon the depths? Does not the 
theorist of the tides believe that on the side 
farthest removed from the moon the earth 
is pulled away from the sea — away from the 
bottom of the sea? Oceanography is not by 
any means a complete science, and there are 
many facts, in the deep bosom of the ocean 
buried, that may some day arise to overset 
present theories. 

As already said, the so-called tidal wave, set 
in motion by an earthquake or volcanic explo- 
sion, is quite different from the ordinary tide. 
The explosion that starts the wave may come 
from the bottom and may shake all the subter- 
ranean depths for hundreds of miles about it. 
The deep-sea fishes killed and blown to the sur- 
face by the bursting of Krakatoa would seem to 
indicate that the great wave set in motion by 



IN THE DEPTHS 



51 



the explosion started from the lower depths. 
This wave moved across the Indian Ocean, pos- 
sibly reaching down two thousand fathoms 
from top to bottom, swaying and tossing every- 
thing it encountered ; until finally rounding the 
South Pole — half of the wave on either side — 
it met and destroyed itself. The South Ameri- 
can tidal wave of 1877, driven by an earth- 
quake across the Pacific, may have been of 
even greater depth, if we may judge by its 
surface height. The jar that set it in motion 
must have affected the bottom as well as the 
lip of the dish. 

Aside from these exceptional violences, which 
occur only once or more in a century and last 
for only a few hours, the great depths of the 
ocean are doubtless very still, very motionless. 
None of the fret of the surface is felt in them ; 
only the sluggish exchange of cold and warm 
currents that drag along the sea ooze or creep 
inch by inch in vast fields from level to level. 
The lair of the great polyp is not invaded by 
wind or wave. ISTor by sunlight. The fishes 
down there have eyes, but eyes perhaps not well 
fitted for our light. Phosphorescent beams, it 
is said, are all that ever come to them; but of 
that we may not be sure. If there were ears 
wherewith to hear in those ocean eaves, they 



The great 
tidal waves. 



Stillness of 

ocean 

depths. 



52 



THE OPAL SEA 



Darkness of 
the depths. 



In the pit. 



"would be even less useful than eyes, save as a 
means of balancing in ascents and descents; 
for 

"There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts 
of the deep, 
On the great gray level plains of ooze where the shell- 
burred cables creep." 

Nothing there ever breaks the eternal silence 
or varies the vast monotony. 

It is thought, again, that no vegetation of 
any kind lives in those depths, though this may 
be an error; and that no visible colors enliven 
its floors, though that, too, may be a false con- 
clusion. There are no seasons, no springtime 
or harvest, no day or night. Time is as naught 
in this kingdom of the sea, where no king sits 
in state and no law is known but the law of 
self-preservation. And yet, hideous as it may 
seem, this deep, dark pit, without air or sky, 
where serpentine things creep and grapple and 
devour each other, should have its purpose in 
the economy of nature. Nothing is builded in 
vain. Out of the ooze and slime of the sea, 
who shall say what forms of life-repulsive stalk 
into nobler being! 

But again the deadly chill of it ! All the 
warmth of the sea lies on the surface. The 



IN THE DEPTHS 



53 



underlying waters are cold — intensely cold. 
Not in the polar regions alone is this true, as 
might naturally be supposed. The waters there 
have given a temperature as low as 28° F. ; 
but the temperature underlying the equatorial 
waters is only a degree or more higher. Great 
wastes of ice-cold water underlie all the seas. 
The Pacific with its southern fields exposed to 
the sun might be thought warmer than the 
Atlantic, but in reality it is colder by about 
two degrees — the register being some 33° F. 
for the one and 35° F. for the other. Three 
thousand fathoms down the temperature of all 
the seas is practically the same. 

What heat if any comes from the underlying 
earth to warm the great hollows of the sea can 
only be surmised. None is derived directly 
from the sun, because our sunlight is thought 
not to penetrate more than five hundred feet 
of water. And at the best water is not an easy 
medium to warm. The sun's rays pass through 
it, as through glass, leaving little heat behind. 
To be sure, the surface of the sea in places 
often takes a high temperature — the Eed Sea, 
for instance, sometimes reaching 85° F. or even 
90° F. ; but it is only a very thin sheet of water 
that reaches that height. In the North At- 
lantic the sun may beat all day upon the flat 



Intense cold 
of deep 
waters. 



Water not 

easily 

warmed. 



54 



THE OPAL SEA 



Ocean tem- 
peratures. 



The sea 



Mountains 
in the sea. 



sea and not raise its temperature more than 
half a degree. Moreover, the area of heat- 
gathering water is too limited to affect the 
great body profoundly. Ninety per cent of the 
ocean waters fall below 40° F. So, with all the 
warming and tempering effect of the sea upon 
certain climates or countries, it is still some- 
thing of a cold blanket wrapped about the 
earth. 

As for the sea beds themselves, one cannot 
think of them as other than the bottoms of 
wide valleys or great, flat basins lying far be- 
low us — sunken basins of the earth where the 
waters have lodged by force of gravital circum- 
stance. The irregularities of the earth's sur- 
face foot up in actual height and depth a dif- 
ference of some ten or a dozen miles. That is 
to say, if we consider sea level as the mean, 
we shall find mountains rising above it five 
or six miles and ocean troughs falling below it 
five or six miles. But there the resemblance 
seems to end, for there are no such abrupt 
mountains, valleys, or precipices in the sea as 
upon the land. 

And yet there are exceptions to such a con- 
clusion. The island group of the Bermudas 
is clearly a mountainous mass springing up- 
ward from the sea floor. The upper part of it 



IN THE DEPTHS 



55 



is of coral formation and rests upon a huge 
tower of limestone somewhat like a capital 
upon a column. The soundings off the edge 
of the reefs give a depth of about 2,400 
fathoms, showing that here is a mighty butte, 
capped with coral, rising sheer through two 
and a half miles of water to the surface. St. 
Helena and Ascension Island, both of volcanic 
formation, also rise abruptly from great 
depths; and to the north of New Zealand there 
is a submerged basin from which lift marine 
sierras some thirty thousand feet without quite 
breaking the water line. But generally speak- 
ing there are few mountains in the sea other 
than those of coralline or volcanic origin. It 
is not probable that there are any extensive 
ranges or that there are great wrinkles or folds 
in the earth's crust underlying the depths. 
This is, of course, conjecture; and yet circum- 
stances of dredging and sounding seem to con- 
firm it. 

The pot-holes that sink far below the average 
depth are just as rare as the elevations that rise 
to abrupt heights; but still they do exist in 
certain places. Off the shores, or " conti- 
nental benches" as they are called, there are 
sometimes swift descents to almost fathomless 
depths — descents as over the edge of cliffs and 



Volcanic 
and coral- 
line forma- 
tions. 



Pot-holes 
and chasms. 



56 



THE OPAL SEA 



Sea 
troughs. 



Sinks of 
ooze. 



down walls of rock mile after mile. There is 
some such slashed chasm of the sea off the 
coast of Porto Eico where the soundings give 
a depth of 27,366 feet, and there is a " trough " 
in the Pacific, a hundred miles off the Kurile 
Islands, where soundings show a depth of over 
five miles. 

These hollows of the sea bed, as we have 
seen, suggest a correspondence to heights of the 
land; and yet it must be repeated that they 
should not be looked upon as inverted Hima- 
layas. The sea trough is not exactly hewn out 
of rock. It has no sharp edges; all its sur- 
faces are worn smooth, not so much by erosion 
as by terrific pressure; and all its substances 
are honeycombed and softened by the action of 
carbonic-acid gas. The bottoms of the pit must 
be mere sinks of ooze. They cannot have the 
hard surfaces and sharp fractures of the cliff 
wall. The chemical action of the underlying 
water would make it quite impossible. Besides, 
the dredge keeps repeating the tale of ooze. 

The shore beds, lying off the continents, 
are more varied than the depths. The cut- 
tings of rivers, the rush of the tides into 
gulfs and bays, the pound of the breakers on 
the coast, help to create many irregularities 
along the meeting place of land and sea. Then, 



IN THE DEPTHS 



57 



too, the washings of the land, the admixture of 
silt and rock with the sea muds make a differ- 
ent bottom from that found in the deep-sea 
troughs. And growing up from these sunlit 
bottoms are all forms of sea life and shore life. 
Along the continental benches are vast hill- 
sides covered with algce as with an olive-green 
carpet, wide meadows where kelp slowly swings 
in the blue-green light, and out from the 
cliffs long slips and slides of rock (taluses 
leading downward into the sea), where float 
trailing green-and-opal ribbons, thin trunks 
and cylinders that stand like tiny sahuaros 
casting out living arms for food, and groves 
of dull green branches that have neither fruit 
nor foliage and never change hue nor place. 

Impressive, indeed, to the sponge-gatherer 
and the pearl-diver are these gardens and for- 
ests of the shore that undulate only to the slow 
ebb and flow of tides; but they are merely the 
fringe to the mantle as compared with the bar- 
rens of the deep. Once the abrupt breaks of 
the shore-bench are passed the ocean bed shelves 
off into dark shoals that correspond to elevated 
tablelands, and are followed by depths that lie 
flat like inland basins. These latter are cut 
through by long trenches, not very different 
from the deep arroyos of the desert or the 



Shore beds 
and their 
bottoms. 



Along the 

shore 

benches. 



Dark 
trenches. 



58 



THE OPAL SEA 



Haunts of 
the octopus. 



Make-up of 
the sea 
muds. 



Terrigenous 



watersheds of mighty rivers. For hundreds 
and hundreds of miles, under an average depth 
of twelve thousand feet, stretch these basins of 
the sea, rolling basins with rounded surfaces 
that have no outcroppings of rock in peak or 
precipice — mere wastes of soft mud. It is not 
possible to imagine anything more drear than 
these cold phosphorescent haunts of the octo- 
pus, reaching seaward with unending monotony. 
When closely examined under a glass the 
make-up of the sea floor is not found to be of 
one kind of mud alone. The dredgings of the 
Challenger, the Blake, and other ships, reveal 
a large variety of deposits; and these have ad- 
mitted of some scientific classification. The 
shallow-water deposits, as already noted, are of 
finer gravels and sands washed down from the 
continental shelves and carried out to sea by 
vagrant shore currents. The nature of the 
coast usually suggests the quality of the de- 
posits lying off it — a granite coast with much 
iron in it producing the typical red sands, 
coral islands producing coral sands, and vol- 
canic reefs casting down volcanic debris. The 
beds of semi-enclosed waters, such as the seas 
of China and Japan, or such vast inlets as the 
Baltic or the Black Sea, are made up of simi- 
lar "terrigenous deposits," as they are called. 



IN THE DEPTHS 



59 



There are other ways whereby land deposits 
get into the sea beds — other ways than by wash- 
ing down from the shores. From the poles, 
reaching toward the temperate zones, there are 
vast plains or " banks," composed of fine detri- 
tus which was originally carried seaward by 
glaciers and icebergs; and, as the bergs melted, 
gradually sank through the water to the bot- 
tom, forming there a glacial ooze. Again the 
basin of the Mediterranean, along the African 
coast, has been changed in no small degree by 
the sands of Sahara caught up in the air by 
southern siroccos and scattered far and wide 
upon the waters. And, again, there is no doubt 
that such volcanic eruptions as the recent one 
upon the island of Martinique, with its clouds 
of dust and ashes, have a decided effect upon 
the adjacent sea floors. 

But the deep-sea beds, containing what are 
called the " abysmal deposits," are not influ- 
enced by shore or land changes. In five hun- 
dred fathoms of water, and far removed from 
land, ninety per cent of the sea floor may be 
made up of the empty shells of foraminifera, 
pteropods, and other organisms that live in and 
upon the surface of the water. After the death 
of the occupants these infinitesimal shells sink 
slowly through the dark waters to the ocean's 



Glacial 
ooze. 



Volcanic 
dust. 



Abysmal 



60 



THE OPAL SEA 



Pteropod 
ooze. 



Globigerina 
and Radio- 
larian 
oozes. 



The Red 
Clay. 



bed where, with many millions of others, they 
help form a " Pteropod ooze." At a depth of, 
say, two thousand fathoms the same shells of 
foraminifera are forever raining downward 
from the surface; hut the bottom deposit does 
not show more than an average of sixty per 
cent of them. When three thousand fathoms 
of depth is reached the foraminifera are re- 
duced to thirty per cent. This decrease is ow- 
ing to the increased presence of carbonic-acid 
gas, which, as already suggested, dissolves and 
destroys the shells. The remainder looks like 
a gray or blue chalk, is called " Globigerina 
ooze/' and is found chiefly in the North Atlan- 
tic and Southern oceans. Finally this, too, 
disappears giving place to a " Eadiolarian 
ooze," composed of the skeletons of radiolaria 
or star-shaped organisms less susceptible to the 
influence of carbonic-acid gas than the foram- 
inifera. In the greatest depths of all is 
found the Eed Clay or Eed Mud deposits. 

The Red Clay which covers the deep floors 
of the Pacific and the Indian oceans is made 
up of refuse and residue — that which can with- 
stand the strong chemical action of the gases. 
In it may be found decomposed volcanic rock, 
pumice, zeolitic crystals, manganese oxides, 
meteoric iron, teeth of sharks, and ear bones 



IN THE DEPTHS 



61 



of whales. Few, if any, shore deposits are 
apparent in it. The rock is vitreous refuse 
belched forth by subterranean or insular vol- 
canoes. The minerals are supposed to be of 
cosmic origin — planetary dust and meteoric 
fragments that have fallen into the sea and 
become disintegrated. The great quantity of 
sharks' teeth remains quite unaccounted for — 
at least their apparent gathering together in 
these ocean basins is considered very strange. 

Another thing that seems quite inexplicable 
is that no deep-sea dredge, no rope of steel, 
has ever drawn up anything from the Eed Clay 
beds that tells of humanity. In shallow waters 
it may well be there lie 

"A thousand men that fishes gnaw'd upon; 
Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, 
Inestimable stones, invalued jewels, 
All scattered in the bottom of the sea." 

Without doubt there are whitened bones, and 
ship-girders of iron, and great guns of steel, 
lying down below the lost fields of battle or of 
tempest; but not in the great depths have any 
such relics been found. The sunken basins give 
no hint of man or his doings. Perhaps his years 
of navigation have been too few. The Eed Clay 
floor is one of very slow accumulation and is 



Contents of 
the sea 
pits. 



Nothing of 
humanity 
in the great 
depths. 






62 



THE OPAL SEA 



The deep- 
sea record 
not com- 
plete. 



Ocean 
transpar- 
ency. 



Seeing vrith 
the unaided 
eye. 



supposed to be very old. Then, again, the deep- 
sea record is by no means complete. It is 
largely the tale of the Challenger dredge. 
That was a beginning not a finality. 

And, of course, there is no seeing into the 
great depths, no gaining of ocular proof. If 
the water were clear — yes; but it is not. The 
particles of dust, salt, and minute sea life that 
float in it check and bend back the rays of 
light, at least the rays familiar to us in the 
sun's spectrum; and what we see and know of 
ocean transparency is merely the illuminated 
surface, a hundred fathoms of the upper 
crystal. 

It is said that in the clear waters of the polar 
regions the unaided eye can see seventy fath- 
oms down — a statement that seems very ques- 
tionable and yet may be true, though certain 
experiments, made by sinking white disks in 
the water and noting the point of their disap- 
pearance, have not resulted so favorably. All 
depends necessarily upon the clarity of the 
water. That at the poles seems a trifle clearer 
than that at the tropics. And yet it is aston- 
ishing what depths may be sounded with the 
eye in such a salt sea as the Mediterranean. 
Looking down into it from the prow of a 
yacht, the beams of the sun can be seen, hun- 



I15T THE DEPTHS 



63. 



dreds of feet below, scattering like golden 
threads through the under-waters, lighting up 
great beds of kelp and banks of sponges and 
gray floors of ooze, where flounders lie flattened 
in the mud and polyps creep and albicores go 
gliding by with apparently no effort. 

Even more marked than the Mediterranean 
is the crystalline quality of the Caribbean. So 
clear is it that Columbus — Columbus who was 
seeking a new trade route rather than a new 
beauty of the sea — could not help commenting 
upon it. The Gulf of California, on the Pa- 
cific side, is quite as clear. From the high 
cliffs near Gruaymas one can see floors of white 
rock, two hundred feet beneath the surface, 
which are not only distinctly visible to the eye 
but cast reflected lights upward that affect the 
color of the surface waters. The patches on 
the surface that look light gray or yellow or 
perhaps blackish — the patches that the navi- 
gator so quickly notices and associates with 
reefs or bars — are frequently caused by the re- 
flection of the underlying sea beds. They are 
proof in themselves of the transparency of the 
water. 

But the underlying sea beds may also de- 
stroy transparency. The muddy bottoms of the 
North Sea make its waters cloudy, yellowish, — 



The clear 
Mediier- 



The Carib- 
bean and the 
Pacific. 



Bottom 
reflections 



64 



THE OPAL SEA 



Muddy 
bottoms and 
their effects. 



Mineral 
stains. 



Sea saw- 
dust. 



at times so turbid that a few feet may obscure 
all vision; the Yellow Sea is yellow largely be- 
cause of its muds held in solution ; and in other 
seas and bays vegetable deposits produce differ- 
ent hues of red, brown, or gray. There is little 
doubt also that minerals may make local colors 
in the sea as in the smaller fresh-water pools 
of the land. The stain of iron has given the 
water along many a rocky shore a saffron hue, 
and the small streaks of bright blue-green that 
occasionally show in shallow bays may possibly 
be caused by some vein of copper underlying 
them. 

Aside from such local happenings, aside 
from patches of " sea sawdust " (beds of float- 
ing cylinder-shaped algce of minute propor- 
tions, or swarms of one-celled animalculas that 
give the sea distinct hues of red, brown, or 
white), there are heights and depths of sea 
color that extend in body over vast areas. The 
sea is not an unbroken blue. That there is 
variety no one can doubt who has seen the Gulf 
Stream flowing in a dark current through the 
lighter colored body of the Atlantic. The con- 
trast is too apparent. The ultramarine cur- 
rent changes under different skies; but no 
matter what the sky, the Gulf Stream is al- 
ways a darker and a different hue from its 



IN THE DEPTHS 



65 



bordering waters. This intimates that the 
water itself has some property or quality pe- 
culiarly its own which gives it local coloring. 
What is this property? 

Particles floating in water have, no doubt, 
the power of producing a color effect upon the 
water itself. The fine hue of the Ehone is 
caused by the granite and mica grains that it 
bears with it to the sea, and for many years 
this river was supposed to lend its coloring to 
the Mediterranean and make that sea blue. 
But the Mediterranean has other particles in its 
waters that are equally efficacious in producing 
color. The chief of these is salt. The salt 
particle, because of its minuteness and its af- 
finity as regards size, has the faculty of inter- 
rupting, checking, refracting, reflecting, the 
small blue ray of the sunbeam. It does this so 
effectively that, when seen in great mass, the 
particles apparently reflect from the sea depths 
a color not unlike the blue sky itself. It is 
then that we behold " the deep blue sea." That 
the sunlight and blue sky are contributory 
causes of the blue sea we may be sure, for the 
blue largely disappears with the sun and sky. 
The bluest of seas when under storm clouds with 
wind will show gray-green in every curling 
wave: and wherever the wave breaks on the 



The Gulf 

Stream 

coloring. 



Local color 
of water; 
how pro- 
duced. 



The salt 
particle. 



66 



THE OPAL SEA 



Effect of 
blue sky. 



Local color 
of sea water 
is green. 



Salinity 
and its 
effect. 



coast or on the ship's side, there will be rush- 
ing crests of green-and-white foam. This is 
equally true of the G-ulf Stream, which beats 
up into a deep green in storm for all the indigo 
of it under sunlight. 

It would seem then that while the sun-and- 
sky color of sea water is blue, its local color 
as seen under neutral light is pale green or 
gray-green. Many minor illustrations rise up 
readily enough to confirm such a belief. The 
stories told by the sponge-fishers and pearl- 
divers are all of green water below the surface; 
at Venice the reflection of the gondola in the 
canals is not blue or black but green; and sail- 
ing into the Bay of Naples on a clear day, the 
water appears intensely blue while the same 
water seen in the tanks of the Naples Aquarium 
is green. 

Possibly the salt particle is responsible for 
the great bulk of local sea coloring. It gives 
us blue when the light is reflected, green when 
it is transmitted, grays, purples, and mauves 
when it is broken. The salt particle — salinity 
— also gives body and quality to the color. The 
waters of the polar regions, continually fresh- 
ened by snow and ice, are much lighter in hue 
than those under the equatorial sun, rendered 
densely saline by the unceasing evaporation of 



I1ST THE DEPTHS 



67 



the fresh element in them. And, of course, 
much apparent body is imparted to sea color- 
ing by the depth of the waters. When taken 
up in an ordinary glass salt water is apparently 
colorless. There is not enough of it to make 
a tint. Air at short range is just as negative, 
but when seen several miles in depth the color 
of the element is very noticeable. 

The sea water is not so subtile, not so deli- 
cate, in hue as the air. ISTo one can guess how 
many strata of atmosphere we look through 
to gain the blue sky over, say, Mexico. A hun- 
dred miles away we can see the blurred forms 
of the Mexican sierras melting into air, and 
feel the blue haze in between; but it has no 
such intensity as the blue overhead. The sea 
water is infinitely denser. And yet looking 
down into it who can say where the coloring 
begins or where it ends ! It is no surface 
veneer. It gains by depth, and is wonderfully 
beautiful because of its transparency and lumi- 
nosity. The color increases with the layers of 
water, deepening and darkening from the blue- 
green of turquoise to the darker hue of ame- 
thyst and the deep blue of lapis-lazuli. 

And still there may be a further cause for 
sea coloring that I am tempted to suggest at 
least. The deepest hues are to be found at 



Coloring by 
depth of 
water. 



Color of 
water and 
air. 



Beauty of 
sea color. 



68 



THE OPAL SEA 



Tempera- 
ture as a 
color factor. 



Color, local 

and 

reflected 



the warm tropics ; the lightest at the cold poles. 
Temperature as well as saline density may have 
something to do with producing this result. 
It is a noteworthy fact that the bluest pools 
in the Yellowstone Park are the ones with hot 
water in them; and certainly in the ocean the 
bluest waters are those that have a surface 
temperature running as high as 80° P. or more. 
Probably no one of these factors — temperature, 
depth, or salinity — is sufficient in itself to ac- 
count for sea color. It is more likely that a 
combination of them all, with perhaps other 
causes unknown to us, are necessary to the pro- 
duction of the different results. 

So much for the actual color of the sea, 
which varied as it may be, intensely beautiful 
as it is in quality, more wonderful than pre- 
cious jewels in transparency and light, is still 
but a dull beauty compared with the exhaust- 
less splendor of the surface reflection. The 
Great Mirror which mingles with its own color- 
ing every color in the gorgeous furnishing of 
the sun and sky, tempering, blending, harmo- 
nizing all tints into supreme glory, is not to 
be equaled by any other beauty of the round 
world. It has no limitations, no fixed reper- 
tory, no "usual appearance." All things of 
color and light belong to it, every flash from its 



IN THE DEPTHS 



69 



myriad facets is a new revelation, every color 
on its shimmering surface is a new combina- 
tion; and not one of the millions of waves that 
heave along its surface bears likeness to an- 
other. The variety of the sea surface is in- 
finite. 



Splendors 
of reflection. 



CHAPTEK IV 



THE GREAT MIRROR 



Solomon's 
Brazen Sea. 



Out of Judaea, seated back from the coast 
on its Syrian hills, — Judaea that had more fear 
than knowledge of the great waters — came the 
earliest suggestion of the sea in art. This was 
nothing more nor less than a huge round reser- 
voir of brass that occupied a place in the court- 
yard of Solomon's Temple at Jerusalem. It 
was fifteen feet in width, a hand's breadth in 
thickness, weighed over twenty tons, and held 
nearly five thousand gallons of water. The 
backs of twelve brazen oxen supported it, the 
sides of it were of beaten design, and its lip 
was wrought, as the Hebrew Scriptures tell us, 
like " the brim of a cup with flowers of lilies." 
The name given to it, and by which it was 
usually known, was " The Sea " — sometimes 
" The Brazen Sea." 

What representative character was expressed 
in this massive basin, what if any likeness it 
was supposed to have to the actual sea, we shall 
not now know. Perhaps it was called the sea 
because of its great water-holding capacity and 
70 



THE GREAT MIRROR 



71 



probably there was no significance attached to 
the fact that it was round. And yet that 
roundness is an apparent truth of the real sea. 
As we stand upon the deck of a vessel in mid- 
ocean we find ourselves in the exact center of 
an enormous circle and the horizon line is the 
bounding rim. We know that this is merely 
an illusion, that the sea reaches on three thou- 
sand miles to France or eight thousand miles 
to Japan, as the ship sails, that there is no 
disk of water, and that the appearance is mis- 
leading; yet in the presence of the sea itself 
we are almost persuaded to believe our eyes. 
The great expanse seems circular though it has 
no such form. 

And we think it lies flat though it curves 
down and away from us, following the rotund- 
ity of the globe. Indeed, it often has a very 
opposite look. Instead of slipping down and 
away at the horizon it seems to rise up. 
That the lip of Solomon's brazen reservoir was 
fashioned to represent the sea horizon is per- 
haps a far-fetched fancy; but that the sea 
horizon itself looks like " the brim of a cup " 
will hardly be questioned. It apparently lifts 
against the sky line, seems to draw in at times, 
and is often as smooth, as clean cut, and as 
sharp in line as any lip of porcelain or brass. 



Apparent 
roundness 
of the sea 
circle. 



The ship 
the center of 
the circle. 



The "rise- 
up" of 
horizon 



72 



THE OPAL SEA 



Bowls of 
blue. 



Illusions of 
the sea. 



A limitless 
space. 



The resemblance to a shallow bowl is not to 
be shaken off. It grows upon one and becomes 
more impressive as we study the blue above us. 
For there in the sky is another, an inverted 
bowl of blue, that comes down and fits upon 
the bowl of the sea. The horizon line is the 
point of juncture, and the brims meet so ex- 
actly that no ray of light creeps through to tell 
us what lies beyond. 

It seems, then, by a slight stretch of the 
imagination, that when at sea we are in the 
center of a hollow globe formed by two hemi- 
spheres of blue. We are shut in and yet feel 
no sense of confinement or of oppression. The 
elements of sky and sea are too transparent, 
too fugitive, too intangible for that. Moreover, 
we are continually moving our central base as 
the ship moves, wandering through a region 
that knows no limits, has no beginning, comes 
to no ending. As for the world of land, it is 
possible for the moment to forget there ever 
was such a thing. We are creatures of the 
more volatile elements; and if along the west- 
ern verge dimly show the silver and gray spots 
of some coral group, they are but as 

" Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of 
sea"; 

and if overhead the white clouds go by in flocks. 



THE GREAT MIRROR 



73 



they are but as vague forms of light that slowly 
glide under the celestial blue. 

The two blues ! Have they always been blue 
to human eyes? The Semite thought the sky 
was merely a shade of white, an embodiment 
of light akin to sapphire; and the Greek spoke 
of the sea as " wine-dark " and even " black/' 
but never " blue/' The Kig-Veda, the Talmud, 
the Homeric poems, the Edda, do not mention 
the word. Was this a limitation of vision or 
merely of vocabulary? The average person to- 
day has neither eye nor name for the finely 
broken hues used in the manufacture of silks 
and tapestries, and it is not to be wondered at 
if the ancients confused colors with the light 
which they contained, and considered them 
merely as tones or shades of white. 

Yet the blues have a very real existence. 
The sky color I have already described and 
explained as caused by the dust particles in 
the upper air which refract and practically 
hold in check the blue rays of the sunbeam;* 
and the sea color is always more or less a re- 
flection of the sky. The sea itself is like a 
mirror and, of course, it comes the nearest to 
faithfully reproducing what is over it when its 
waters are the smoothest; but from the fact 
* The Desert, p. 82 et seq. 



The two 
blues. 



Knowledge 
of color 
with the 
ancients. 



The sea like 
a mirror. 



74 



THE OPAL SEA 



The image 
in the sea is 
darker than 
the original. 



Darkened 
reflection at 
horizon. 



that it has a color of its own — a local color — 
it is not precisely like a mirror of white glass 
with a quicksilver background to catch and 
throw back the reflection. It is more like the 
reflecting surface of an aquamarine or the 
facet of a sapphire and puts some of its own 
hue in the reproduced image. The image in 
the sea therefore is always a shade or so darker 
than the original in the sky. The cerulean blue 
above becomes an ultramarine below, a white 
cloud becomes a gray cloud, and a gray cloud 
a dark sooty cloud. Sunset hues blend into 
new tones and mingle into deeper harmonies, 
and light itself, whether from sun, moon, or 
stars, becomes more mellow in tone, if less 
brilliant in intensity, when seen in the mirror 
of the deep. 

This darkening of the reflection seems more 
marked along the horizon line than elsewhere, 
because the sky near there is often whitish in 
tone — much whiter than the sky of the zenith 
— and thus makes more of a contrast; but 
everywhere and anywhere the reflection is 
darker than the original. This becomes still 
more noticeable as soon as the surface of the sea 
is ruffled by wind. The many facets of the little 
waves immediately give out reflections of their 
own, like pieces of a broken mirror. As they 



THE GKEAT MIEEOE 



75 



pitch at odd angles the dark spots upon the 
under portions or sides of them which em- 
phasize their form and drawing, look like 
shadows; but such they are not. They are the 
side reflections of neighboring waves or, more 
often, wave-facets practically out of reflection 
— wave-facets showing merely the color of sea 
water. A very faint shadow is sometimes seen 
under the crest of a breaker as it curls, curves, 
and pitches forward to a fall, especially if the 
water be muddy ; but a shadow on the open sea, 
cast by its own waves, is really non-existent. 

This darkening of the reflection, this shading 
of the mirror into a deeper hue by reason of 
a ruffled surface, is very noticeable from the 
dunes or cliffs looking seaward on a breezy day. 
Not only is the whole sea darker than the sky, 
but, wherever the gusts and flaws of wind can 
be traced, patches of color will appear still 
darker than the surrounding water. Fre- 
quently these patches of broken surface show 
extraordinary tints owing to eccentricities of 
light. It is an everyday experience at sea to 
find the water on one side of the ship looking 
toward the horizon perhaps a deep blue, and 
on the other side perhaps a pea-green. Again, 
the light produces a different appearance as we 
turn toward the sun or away from it. A road- 



Shadows on 
water. 



Reflection 
in ruffled 
seas. 



Eccentrici- 
ties of light 
and color. 



76 



THE OPAL SEA 



Sea under 
cloud light. 



in shadowed 
spaces. 



way on the land; if we follow along it toward 
the setting sun, is apparently darker than the 
same roadway going to the east. A similar 
effect is noticeable at sea, for looking westward 
at sunset we see into the darkened portions of 
the waves, and looking eastward we see their 
reflected high lights. 

More extraordinary still are the hues that 
creep into ruffled seas when the blue sky is 
broken by cumulus clouds, or mantled by veils 
of the stratus and nimbus. Almost any un- 
thinkable and unbelievable color may then ap- 
pear, checking, streaking, marking the sea with 
strange patterns in odd contrasts. The ordi- 
nary white cloud which travels slowly across 
the sky will, if the sea is smooth, cast an ivory 
reflection; if the sea is rough, it may, in place 
of reflection, cast what is practically a shadow. 
This shadow (or as Euskin prefers to call 
it, this reflection in a shadowed space) is usu- 
ally lilac-blue — darker blue than the surround- 
ing water — and within the shadow the little 
faceted waves as they dance often shimmer like 
triangles of blue glass. Again, the gray clouds 
of the nimbus, that shut out the heavens en- 
tirely, cover the whole sea area with a dull lead 
color; but when through this veil of clouds a 
sun shaft breaks and strikes upon the water, 



THE GREAT MIRROR 



77 



you are perhaps surprised to see that spot of 
water show a local color of lively green, its 
little facets flashing like emeralds. 

Whether the surface is smooth or rough, the 
sea is certain to take its light and most of its 
coloring from the sky overhead. Clouds of 
rose and lilac that spread around the circle 
of the horizon at dusk and reach up into 
the zenith will produce the amethystine sea, 
which is not by any means an uncommon ap- 
pearance; and "the purple seas," that poets 
delight to talk about, are realities under cold 
storm clouds. In the same way the sea of gold 
and the wave of fire come from the chrome 
yellows and scarlets of the sunset west; and 
out of the same resourceful sky come broken 
tones that, seen in the mirror, tell a tale of 
silver, of steel-blue, of pearl-gray, of opal, of 
turquoise, of robin's-egg blue. 

But the reflection is very much deadened and 
often obliterated if the water is lacking in 
purity. The North Sea, for instance, after a 
storm has raged for several days and stirred 
up the yellow muds of the bottom, will not 
show blue notwithstanding the bluest of skies 
may beam above it. On such a sea dazzling 
white clouds make only dull yellow spots, the 
reds of sunset merely deepen and render more 



Light and 
color cornea 
from sky. 



Sunset 
skies in the 
water. 



Muddy 
waters dull 
reflections. 



78 



THE OPAL SEA 



Effect of 
temperature 
on color. 



Color in 

polar 

regions. 



opaque the local coloring; and as for the pearl 
and opal tints they are practically lost. Often- 
times at sunset or sunrise a muddy sea will 
flash light like a diamond and yet completely 
fail to flash color. 

The quality of coloring both in the original 
and in the reflection is also greatly influenced 
by the density of the atmosphere and by tem- 
perature. The clear white light of the polar 
regions favors sharp colors, which instead of 
blending together hold aloof and keep their in- 
dividuality. There the aerial envelope does 
not bind all hues in a golden thrall, but allows 
the blues and reds and greens to glow intense. 
In the morning and evening, when the sun's 
rays strike the sea obliquely, there are long 
trailing tracks of sunlight — sometimes yellow 
and sometimes red — twisting and writhing on 
the uneasy waters. As for the twilight reflec- 
tions in the water, they are vivid in reds that 
are all scarlet, as the moonlights and midnights 
are weird in blues that are all purple. 

But the thin polar air, with its consequent 
white light, is not favorable to the most per- 
fect color harmony. It is too crude, too lim- 
ited in its scale. On the contrary, sunlight fall- 
ing through a heated atmosphere seems to be 
shivered into very delicate colors that blend 



THE GREAT MIRROR 



79 



again, at different intensities, into pronounced 
tones. Thus on warm summer days, in tropical 
regions, the air over the sea at sunrise will 
be pale blue; at noon, if the heat continues, it 
will show a trembling dancing gas-blue; and 
by three of the afternoon perhaps it is rosy 
blue or opalescent — something that shimmers 
and changes like mother-of-pearl. 

Given such an atmosphere above a smooth 
water surface and the inevitable result is that 
supreme beauty of reflection — the opal sea. 
The sea not only reflects the air, but its very 
surface seems to be changed by it into an opal- 
escent transparency; just as the sky overhead 
is modified by it into something that looks like 
blue seen through opalescent glasses. Other 
atmospheres, more or less color-laden, that lie 
above the sea are as clearly reflected but per- 
haps not as readily noticed. The silver gray 
that comes with mist or fog is so common that 
we hardly see its effect at all; and the deep 
purple that comes with twilight — so deep that 
you can see it, looking out the darkening cir- 
cle of the ship's cabin windows, as a block of 
indigo — is again overlooked because of its fre- 
quency. But the gas-blue which comes with 
great heat puts a very remarkable face upon 
the sea, and the opalescence is so splendidly 



Color in 
the tropics. 



The opal 



Silver grays 
and twi- 
light pur- 
ples. 



80 



THE OPAL SEA 



The Medi- 
terranean 
in the heat 
ef summer. 



The Dal- 
matian 
coast. 



pearl-like in its quality that it cannot fail of 
attention. 

Yet the opal sea is a common enough ap- 
pearance during hot weather. It shows slightly 
different tints on different days, and perhaps 
only in the still waters of inland seas like the 
Mediterranean or the Caribbean is it seen in its 
full splendor. And just here I can do no bet- 
ter by way of describing this and other ap- 
pearances of the flat sea than by giving extracts 
from my note books. The notes were made 
at different times, by different seas, and may 
sound contradictory or inconsistent, and yet 
they are quite true to the time and place. For 
the sea is not any one thing but many things, 
and rarely repeats the identical appearance. 

"July 3. Noon. Along the Dalmatian coast, steam- 
ing slowly through the island groups below Zara, the day 
fair, warm, and hazy with a peculiar milky-blue haze. 
The sky is blue suffused with rose; the smooth water, 
where it reflects the sky, is pearl-like; seen looking 
straight down into it from the shadowed side of the little 
steamer it is green ; under the shadow of white clouds it 
shows blue; and under the shadow of the smoke trailing 
aft it shows reddish-brown — deepening and darkening 
where the water is most broken by the propeller. The 
bare Velebit Mountains, gleaming white as chalk in the 
sunlight, are seen reversed in the sea and the whiteness 
of them is reduced to an ivory tint of great beauty. 

" Evening. The sea ruffled up this afternoon under 



THE GREAT MIRROR 



81 



a hot wind, the reflection of the steamer smoke on the 
broken water became a very dark cobalt, and the sea 
itself, breaking over white reefs and shelving rocks, 
showed a vivid aquamarine. The sun has just gone 
down in a blaze of fire that licked the tops of all the 
waves into flame. In portions, where the surface is 
comparatively smooth, the yellow of the sky makes a 
golden floor of the sea. The edges of the shore show 
ultramarine, and just out of the line of sun-fire the sea 
looks like blue ink. This is the coloring of Turner's 
'Ulysses and Polyphemus' which I have always 
thought something of an impossibility in its hue and 
tone, something done by Turner for artistic effect, re- 
gardless of truth. I do not know now that Turner put 
in his cold gouts of blue against his hot golds because it 
was true. He wanted the contrast — the relief of the 
warm and cold colors — to make a picture; and Turner 
was a picture maker rather than a nature or a truth 
lover. But here is his effect in nature, nevertheless." 

A few days later at Ragusa, with the same 
sea and the same weather, a slightly different 
appearance was noted. 

"The day is hot, clear save for heap clouds 
over Monte Sergio, the air rosy, opalescent, sway- 
ing, wavering. The town, with its great walls and 
round towers, its domes and turrets, lies below me, 
yellow with the gleam of limestone and stained 
marble, reddish with tile roofs that show everywhere, 
and almost girdled by the deep blue sea. The white 
road from Gravosa is gay with the gleam of villas seen 
in between groups of tall palms, Ravenna pines, mul- 
berry and sycamore trees. Dotted here and there are 



The Adri- 
atic at sun- 
set near 
Spalato. 



Turner 
pictures in 
nature. 



The town of 
Ragusa. 



82 



THE OPAL SEA 



Seen from 

Monte 

Sergio. 



The won- 
derful sea. 



patches of poppies, beds of cannse, great masses of 
oleander. At the southern end of the city is a little 
harbor where fishing smacks with gray, yellow, and red 
sails are slowly gliding about, a lead-colored torpedo 
boat lies at anchor, and from the stern droops the Aus- 
trian flag, showing a blood-red reflection in the water. 
Along the wharves are reddish groups of Albanians, 
Bosnians, Herzegovinians. Rings of chimney swallows 
and white pigeons go circling around the towers; and 
between the harbor and an outlying island drifts of 
gulls slowly wing their way with white backs gleaming 
in the sun. Far out at sea a black ocean steamer is 
trailing a sooty line of smoke along the horizon. Around 
me on the mountainside are worn-out groves of olive, 
and above me are thistle and cactus patches where don- 
keys and black goats browse, and where a stony trail 
winds over the mountain and into the neighboring 
valley. Bands of Herzegovinian men and women in 
their picturesque costumes are coming and going to 
market along the trail. They stop, pass the time of day 
with me, and I tell them in Italian, which they do not 
understand, that the sea is beautiful; and they answer, 
in some dialect which I do not understand, that it is 
most beautiful. Our languages do not convey much, 
but we comprehend, nevertheless. We are talking 
about the wonderful sea, and they are not so weary with 
the everyday sight of it that they fail to respond. Is 
it always so beautiful? Yes; the land may yield little 
food and the sun in summer is perhaps burning hot; but 
always there is the peace and beauty of the sea stretched 
before them. Has the sun ever shone upon another 
such sea as this? As I watch it to-day from the hillside 
above this ancient city on its foot of rock, it seems as 



THE GREAT MIRROR 



83 



though it could never have its equal elsewhere. But it 
is the old story. Drifting along this strange coast, on 
this wonderful sea, each day reveals some new beauty 
more lovely than the last." 

Opalescence, when it gets into the air, seems 
to fight all shadows and turn everything into 
some tint or hue. 

"July 7. In the Gulf of Corinth. The day just 
breaking. The sea is like glass. Thin clouds lying 
along the eastern horizon like a barrier. Above them 
great loopholes of blood-red sky, high up toward the 
zenith a shading of rose, and in the west a dark purple, 
star-lit veiling. The sea responds sluggishly to the 
splendor from above but warms in coloring as the white 
light of the moon and stars goes out before the coming 
day. 

" Noon. The sea is a little ruffled, showing about the 
steamer's sides a wonderful blue — almost as intense 
as that at Corfu or Capri. Far out it makes a dark 
cobalt mass, and along the rocky shores it glows green, 
a Nile green. A haze is in the air through which the 
hills show rosy and pink. Far back from the North 
coast looms Mount Parnassus — a vision of heliotrope 
lost in a lilac haze. It is wonderful just now, not be- 
cause of its classical associations, but as a mere rock re- 
flecting the most lovely light and color in the world. 
The old masters, Leonardo, Giorgione, Rembrandt, all 
their lives pursued the mystery of shadow; and even 
Whistler the modern (who does not, however, belong in 
the same class) made some noise in the world with 
'nocturnes' and twilight shadows along the Thames; 
but here over Mount Parnassus is the mystery of light, 



The sen in 
the early 
morning. 



The opales- 
cent air. 



The helio- 
trope of 
Mount 
Parnassus. 



84 



THE OPAL SEA 



In the 
Cyclades, 



Sapphire 
water. 



light shattered into heliotrope hues without a suspicion of 
dark shadow. Where is the master, old or young, who 
has painted it? Claude Monet has attempted it and 
been laughed at for his pains — more's the pity! " 

During great heat the fiery colors of the 
opal seem to come forward and (especially at 
sunset) to accent and even dominate the color 
scheme of the waters. 

"July 14. Steaming through the Cyclades. The 
day is reeking hot, with a blue sky and small heap clouds 
that seem to have a pink flush about them. The air 
is opalescent and radiant but not a breath of wind. 
The sea, sky, and air are all married to-day — all blended 
into one rosy blue glow. Even the heliotrope hills on 
the little islands come into the harmony. I have never 
seen such a wonderful reflection of the air from the sea. 
It is much stronger than the mirage on the desert which 
produces the illusion of water by reflecting the sky from 
the strata of heated air lying along the ground. Yet the 
water when out of the angle of reflection (as at the bow 
of the steamer looking down) is blue, almost sapphire- 
blue, and so oily-smooth that the white foam thrown 
out by the cut- water rolls over upon the blue in patterns 
that suggest white lace. Amidships the steamer makes 
a swelling wave, but the surface does not break nor does 
the blue show. The swell is opaline and is curved like 
the edges of the mosaic arches in San Marco at Venice. 
Opaline, indeed, is the only word that approximates 
the description of the color. At times it is golden and 
rosy, then milky blue, reminding one of absinthe mixed 
with water, and then again pearl-like. Last night at 
sunset the color of the sea ran into the high notes of the 



THE GEEAT MIRROR 



85 



opal, became glowing and fiery, and finally died away 
in a dream of blue and silver." 

The opalescent sea is not an appearance that 
belongs solely to the tropics, but is seen as far 
north and south as the arctic circles. Occa- 
sionally the northern and western coasts of 
Scotland show it with a sharpness of color that 
might better be called iridescent; and the At- 
lantic coast about Labrador and Nova Scotia 
have it mingled with breaking fog and sum- 
mer mist in a tone that might better be called 
silvery. At Bar Harbor, on Long Island 
Sound, off the Florida Coast — anywhere by the 
Atlantic seaboard where bays or inlets give a 
chance for smooth surfaces — the opal color ap- 
pears, often accompanied by a slight mist and 
a white horizon. 

And frequently in times and places where 
one would expect only opalescence — in tropical 
seas like the Southern Atlantic or the Pacific 
during the heat of early summer — one will find 
cool colorings that might belong to the Behring 
Sea or the Iceland coast. In my note book of 
May, 1900, I find the following memorandum 
about the waters of the Pacific lying above 
Mazatlan in Mexico: 



"Hot morning with no wind, lowering clouds, and a 
lilac sky in the east which has been deepening into pur- 



The opal 
sea seen in 
many lati- 
tudes. 



The coast 
of Mexico. 



86 



THE OPAL SEA 



Cold colors 
in the 
tropics. 



The quality 
of light. 



Different 
tones. 



pie ever since daylight. The sea, too, is purple, and 
growing more so with the darkening of the light. The 
water is perfectly flat, and the indefinite clouds are mir- 
rored below, but with a deeper tone than in the originals. 
The shore and hills are purplish also, the air is mauve 
color; the very light seems to be tinged with this hue as 
though the only rays of the sun that got through the 
clouds were blues and violets. There is a lilac envelope 
about earth and sea and sky. Such an effect if repro- 
duced in painting would hardly meet with acceptance. 
People would insist that it 'isn't true to nature' 
— meaning, of course, that the only truth is the most 
obvious truth." 



The quality of light — that is light as modi- 
fied by atmosphere and temperature — is re- 
sponsible for all these beautiful tones of color 
in the sea, sky, and air. There are days when 
it spreads a pnrple chill, when the clouds 
are purple and the air is cold blue, and 
the water a mixture of them all. Then there 
are other days quite the opposite of this when 
a rosy hue is filtered through the thin film- 
sheets of the stratus and a flush of rose is in 
the air and on the sea. And, again, there are 
other days when the Indian summer of the 
woodlands seems to be upon the waters and the 
hue is golden blue or even yellow. More fre- 
quently, of course, is the familiar silver tone 
that accompanies a slight mist or lifting fog, 



THE GREAT MIRROR 



87 



the pewter tone that comes with a dull day, or 
the cold gray tone that follows rain. 

The striking effects of light and color at sea 
are usually at dawn and twilight, but it is not 
often that these equal in brilliancy similar dis- 
plays along shore. It requires apparently much 
dust in the atmosphere to make very bright col- 
oring and the sea has less of it than the land. 
However, brilliant sky-effects do appear at sea. 
The dawn is usually cool gray, pale yellow, 
or possibly in summer months rose-tinged, or 
lilac. The light spreads up toward the zenith 
and around the horizon ring showing in the 
sky with apparently greater ease than upon the 
sea. That is to say, the envelope of air which 
we call the sky must be lighted before the sea, 
which is but its reflection, can respond. At 
times the water seems to lie cold and inert, 
giving back indifferently the light and color 
from above; but as soon as the sun rides up 
from the ocean's rim and the direct rays strike 
the surface, there is a change. The wide sea 
is instantly flooded with light ; not the pictorial 
compromise in yellow paint of Claude and Tur- 
ner, but the pure white light of the sun, scin- 
tillant, penetrant, above all things luminous. 

Oh, the radiance of summer mornings at 
sea when the ship goes driving straight into 



The dawn 
light at sea. 



Spread of 
the light. 



88 



THE OPAL SEA 



Radiance 
of early 
morning. 



Light on 
ruffled seas. 



Coloring of 
sea at 
midday. 



the dawn and the light keeps springing up 
above the horizon, above the clouds, above the 
yard-arms of the foremast ! How wonderful 
the spread and reach of that radiance, how 
subtle its reflection in the long rolling sea ! 
Its coloring is usually no richer than pale hues 
of lilac, rose, or saffron, and over these there 
is generally cast a dominant mantle of silver. 
As the sun lifts high in the heavens the silver 
is the coloring that finally rules. The narrow 
pathway of light that comes to us along the 
sea is dazzling in its brightness, and if there 
is a broken surface it will glitter as though 
made up of countless diamonds. By ten o'clock 
with a ruffled sea the sun's rays are to be seen 
hitting the little facets of the waves with shots 
of light that seem to strike out, not fire, but 
light again; and by noon the pathway has dis- 
appeared and the light itself has become less 
apparent because more widely diffused. 

The coloring of midday on the sea is usually 
not observed because the hues are all low in 
key and some of them are bleached; but as 
the afternoon wears on the light becomes 
more mellow, the color warmer, the reflection 
sharper, until at sunset perhaps the west is 
all afire with glowing hues that wax and wane, 
shift and change place, then reappear in tints 



THE GEEAT MIEROE 



89 



more lovely as they faint and fade. Nothing 
in painting can more than suggest such a color 
scheme as this. Turner's most brilliant pig- 
ments are dull as ditch-water beside the flam- 
ing sea; and Claude Monet's primary colors, 
placed in juxtaposition upon the canvas for an 
effect of light, do not reach halfway up the 
scale. No pigment ground in a mortar or 
squeezed out of a lead tube ever came within 
fifty degrees of nature's hues. 

Almost invariably at sea we watch the sun- 
set in the sky rather than in the water, and 
yet the reflection below is perhaps more beauti- 
ful because more harmonious. The colors 
deepen and become finer in quality. The scar- 
lets run into dark red, the yellows into orange, 
the blues into ultramarine. The water becomes 
a medium, an atmosphere that blends all the 
hues together to make a color mystery as pro- 
found as any held in the ocean's depths. 

And yet still more distinguished in color 
than this sunset sea incarnadined are the waters 
back in the east that reflect the opalescence of 
the sky in hues of mother-of-pearl. The east- 
ward-lying sea at sunset never startles nor 
amazes; it is not noisy nor blatant, but it has 
the charm of perfect accord and the subtlety 
of refined beauty. You watch it for many min- 



Insufp,- 
ciency of 
painters' 
pigments. 



Sunset 
colors in the 
water. 



Eastward- 
lying waters 
at sunset. 



90 



THE OPAL SEA 



Moonlight 
on the sea. 



The 

Angelas 

hour. 



utes seeing new tones and lights emerge and 
shift, change and disappear; and in its death 
throes — when it slowly fades before the night 
shadow creeping up the eastern sky, when the 
lilacs of the horizon turn pale gray and the 
azure of the sky becomes a cobalt — it is still 
beautiful as a shield of blue-steel lying there 
in the twilight. 

Perhaps at this very time and before the 
twilight has passed, the oval-shaped moon 
comes up over the eastern sea, lighting the 
sky anew with silvery opalescence, and min- 
gling its soft luster with the fading glory of 
the west. The light now comes from two 
sources and both of them pale reflections of 
the sun itself. How supremely beautiful it is 
in its soft glow, how wonderful in the coloring 
it creates — this most poetic light ever seen on 
land or sea ! And how impressive it makes the 
Angelus hour — the hour of prayer when the 
tired world bends the knee and rests a moment 
lost in the beauty of the upper sky ! 

"Ave Maria! O'er the earth and sea 
That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee." 

How many hearts have overflowed in utterance, 
how many vows have been made, how many 
faiths have been pledged, under the spell of 



THE GEEAT MIRROR 



91 



that hour of love ! And the beads that have 
been told, the cries for strength and help that 
have gone up, the tears of repentance and de- 
spair that have fallen in that hour of prayer ! 

Man is, after all, an emotional animal. He 
is easily brought to his knees. And it may be 
a very slight thing that brings him there. The 
scent of meadow grass, the wild rose by the 
roadside, the moan of the autumn wind, the 
falling rain — any one of them may be suffi- 
cient. But above all nature's manifestations 
whereby we are moved emotionally must be 
placed the twilight sea. The still water at 
evening with the Angelus light upon it is some- 
thing that foolish people may pooh-pooh in 
public, as children in the dark whistle to keep 
their courage up ; but deep down in their hearts 
they have an emotion about it — a feeling for 
its beauty and a love for its tranquil splendor, 
if nothing more. 

And after twilight has gone and the moon 
alone is weaving a pathway across the water, 
when the little silver-rimmed waves are gently 
lapping on the beach and the tall pines on the 
headland are standing motionless against the 
purple sky, what fancies come and go across 
the sea! Memories, associations, aspirations, 
regrets, how they pour upon us, struck into 



Effect on the 
emotions of 
the Angelus 
light. 



The Angels 
Pathway. 



92 



THE OPAL SEA 



Our -place 
in nature. 



Starlight 
on the sea. 



new life by the shimmering ocean! We are 
subdued, saddened, perhaps humbled in the 
presence of the great elements; we feel our in- 
consequence, our insignificance. What place 
have we in this dream of glory, this golden 
patterning upon the blue? We watch it weave 
and ravel — that track of moonlight on the sea 
— and fondly imagine that it shines for us 
alone; but it glitters just as brightly along 
many leagues of shore and sea where there are 
no eyes to see it. The moonlight and the sun- 
light with their broken reflections in the wave 
are for all the world alike, and we — perhaps 
we are no more than spots of color like the tiny 
waves that make up the Angels Pathway, or 
merely diminutive cubes in the golden mosaic 
of Creation, touched into momentary light by 
the passing splendor. 

It would seem as though splendor had 
reached its vanishing point when the moon, 
grown cold and white, sinks below the western 
horizon. But no. The sky turns deep purple, 
the waves snap and sparkle in sharp points, the 
shadows gather closer about the ship; but the 
stars are the brighter for their dark surround- 
ing sky, and for the darker mirror in which 
they are reflected. How they glitter above and 
below ! Dark fields of sky dotted with the splen- 



THE GREAT MIRROR 



93 



dor of the constellations and girdled by the 
Milky Way — what mantles of the Invisible are 
these ! And what elusive, intangible beauty ! 
How strange the thought that the light above 
shines through the blue, not from it; and that 
from below it comes up to the surface as from 
the very ocean depths ! 

Mere points of light glittering in the air and 
rocking in the water ! Yet these were the guid- 
ing stars of the Tyrian and Sidonian ships 
long centuries ago. The Portuguese and the 
Italian trusted to them when the compass for- 
sook them, steering by the North Star — a mere 
manifestation of a world millions of miles 
away. And are we not to-day trusting to the 
sun shining upon a sextant — another light far 
removed and uncomprehended ? Surely we 
have walked by faith and not by knowledge all 
the days of our years. 

Midnight and stars on the sea! What mys- 
teries lurk in those soft windless nights when 
the black yard-arms go swinging slowly across 
the constellations, when the black smoke trails 
far behind, and the blue-black water glances all 
around ! Oh, the dark beauty of the blue, the 
serene splendor of the starry white, the inten- 
sity, the immensity of this transparent world ! 
We glide through it steaming, under the Bear 



Star-fields. 



Guiding 
stars. 



Dark wind- 
less nights. 



94 



THE OPAL SE 



The Blue 
Bowl. 



or under the Centaur; but the beauty never 
fades, the mystery never vanishes. We are 
moving hither and yon, within the great Blue 
Bowl, wondering at the light that comes filtered 
through the encompassing arch, and imagining 
vain things about the cause of it; but we shall 
not know. Whether we steam at noonday or 
at midnight we circle within the arch; around 
and around the uttermost rim perhaps, but we 
never pass out. There are limitations — even to 
human fancy. 



CHAPTEK V 



OCEAN PLAINS 



How like infinity itself, rather than its sym- 
bol, seems the sea ! The great bulk of it, the 
wide spread of it, the far reach of it, are ap- 
palling. Horizon lines are not its boundaries, 
nor blue walls of sky its confining barriers. 
There is no place of its beginning nor yet again 
of its ending. Its continuity is unbroken. The 
land seems but a handful of islands sown care- 
lessly here and there upon the waters; but the 
sea stretches out unceasingly, keeps circling on 
forever. The sun never rises, never sets upon 
this kingdom of the wave. Alternate rounds 
of night and day follow each other about the 
shining surface, but it knows no time, no past, 
present, or future. It had no youth, though 
we speak of its formative period; it will never 
have age, though we speak of its centuries of 
existence. Nothing can prevail against it. No 
climate, no season, no convulsion of the globe, 
can more than agitate it for the passing mo- 
ment. Storms ruffle its surface, winds plow 
95 



Continuity 
of the sea. 



96 



THE OPAL SEA 



Endurance 
of the sea. 



The Pacific 

from 

Mexico. 



it with ocean currents, tides sway it in its 
basin, but it always returns to itself. The sun 
drinks it up in evaporation day by day, but 
it is not empty; all the rivers run into it, but 
it is not full. Oh, the immutability, the eter- 
nal endurance of the sea! The earth and that 
which rests within it is ground to dust at last 
and blown about the windy heavens; but the 
sea never fades or disintegrates. Indestructible, 
imperishable, it lives forever — always the same 
sea, always the same beauty. 

Type of all the oceans, sea of all the seas, 
serene in its unconquerable might, rests the 
vast Pacific. Seen from the high tablelands 
of Mexico and by contrast with the uneasy 
peaks of the Sierra Madre how supreme is its 
repose ! The white cone of Popocatapetl seems 
struggling with its encompassing clouds or 
straining upward at the heavens; but the Pa- 
cific is at rest, self-contained, aspiring to 
nothing, disturbed by nothing. How could 
such an immensity be otherwise ! The " West- 
ern Ocean " of the Greek, the Seven Seas of 
the Arab,* the Atlantic of the fifteenth-century 

* The Seven Seas were the Green (Indian), the White 
(Mediterranean), the Black (Euxine), the Blue (Per- 
sian), the Red Sea, the Dead Sea, and the Caspian — all 
of them near the cradle of Islam. 



OCEAN PLAINS 



97 



explorers, what were they compared with the 
great bulk of the Pacific leading outward to the 
Southern Ocean! Its expanses are unknown 
even to this day. Sails come and go along the 
well-traveled lanes, but in the hinter sea there 
are lonely wastes that only the explorer, the 
whaler, and the shipwrecked have seen. Im- 
mense fields of water never parted by the cut- 
water of ship or steamer lie between the Cape 
of Good Hope and Cape Horn; and as for the 
Polar Seas at north and south, they still keep 
silence under the aurora and the midnight sun. 
Perhaps half of the Pacific is as yet unex- 
plored, uncharted; and lies in lonely isolation, 
all unconscious and all careless of its loneliness. 
What signifies the coming of a white-sailed 
ship more than the passing of a gray-winged 
albatross or the churn of a steamer more than 
the surface lashing of a cachalot! 

In summer days from these lofty heights you 
cannot always see the uttermost rim of the 
Pacific. The horizon line is lost in a lilac haze, 
a colored mist, where sails of ships " hull 
down" glimmer ghost-like for hours and then 
slowly slip below the verge. The further dis- 
tance is mystery; and so thick is the air that 
even the nearer sea has an indefinite look. Far 
down along the shore the white edging of foam 



The South- 
ern Ocean. 



Unexplored 
waters. 



98 



THE OPAL SEA 



Looking 
seaward 
from Mexi- 
can high- 
lands. 



Ocean 



shows where the swell is breaking on glittering 
beaches; and farther out, through loopholes in 
the haze, may be seen the flash of little waves. 
The smaller movement of the surface is ap- 
parent as through a veil. The idle, uncertain 
wind ruffles the water in great fields of green 
or amethyst, a vagrant cloud, white as Oriza- 
ba's cap, trails its reflection in the deep; and 
far and wide upon the outstretched waters 
is the rain of sunlight falling in a silver 
shower. 

But there is a greater movement beneath 
the surface that shows at its best only on cool 
days and with a clear horizon line. This move- 
ment is the deep ocean swell that seems always 
rising and sinking in or near the Trade Wind 
regions of the Pacific. The surface may be like 
glass, but underneath there is the heave of long 
far-traveling undulations. These are not very 
high, and rise to no distinct crests; but they 
are often sis or eight hundred feet in thick- 
ness, measuring from hollow to hollow; and 
resemble more the rolls of a Dakota prairie 
than the storm waves of the North Atlantic. 

The glide forward of these long silent ridges, 
the ease of their movement, are astonishing. 
Eidge follows ridge and hollow succeeds to 
hollow without the slightest sound or effort. 



OCEAN PLAINS 



99 



Along the horizon line they can be seen 
"humped up" against the sky, traveling in 
unending procession, moving in rhythmic se- 
quence, without splash of wave or dash of foam. 
That they should rise and fall for days with 
an unbroken surface is still more astonishing. 
They roll and unroll the reflection of the heav- 
ens, they flash the sun, moon, and stars on 
their slopes, they mirror the dawns and the twi- 
light upon their hilltops; but they never break 
with their own weight, nor form false curves 
with their own motion. When they run over 
shoals or dash up a beach they rise into crests 
and fall like other waves; but in deep water 
they come smooth-faced, lift the ship with a 
great slow heave, slip under it, and are gone 
on the other side, with no flaw made in the 
glassy surface, no disturbance of form, no 
shock of breaking water. When a breeze 
springs up it puts tiny facets along the ridges 
and crests, and these may run into a rough 
chop sea without seriously disturbing the move- 
ment of the swells. It is not until heavy storm 
waves set in that the sequence is broken. 

But these deep rolling undulations are 
known chiefly in the tracks of the Trade Winds 
and extend over into the Eegions of Calms. 
They are set in motion — kept in motion — by 



Movement 
of the 
swells. 



Glassy sur- 
faces un- 
broken. 



Region of 
the Trade 



100 



THE OPAL SEA 



Slight sur- 
face move- 
ments. 



The ocean 
steamer. 



Modern 
ships and 
sea travel. 



the steady pressure of the Trades. Elsewhere on 
tropic seas the surface may be smooth, and ap- 
parently flat, though there are always some 
slight movements beneath the surface, such, for 
instance, as the tailings of distant storms, the 
heave of the tide, or the interchange of cur- 
rents. These are, however, little noticed from 
the ship in mid-ocean. Sometimes there are 
days succeeding days when the only break upon 
the surface is made by the cut-water, and the 
only foam seen is that pushed out by the shoul- 
der of the ship. 

Not unprofitable are the sea studies made 
from the deck of the ship, even though that 
ship be an ocean steamer. The ancient mariner 
who passed his boyhood, in a whaler, becalmed 
in the horse latitudes or freezing off the fag- 
end, of New Zealand, has some contempt for the 
modern wedge of steel that plies between the 
continents. He thinks we have fallen upon evil 
times and. that we no longer see the ocean or 
enjoy travel upon it. The thought is not new. 
Our grandfathers argued thus and so in favor 
of the stage coach. Every age is the " good old 
time" save our own; and every ship looks ro- 
mantic but the one we sail in. Yet change as 
we may our vehicles of travel, the sea remains 
the same; and if we have observant eyes there 




OCEAN PLAINS 



101 



are still beautiful things to be seen from 
steamer decks or even from the bridge of that 
peace destroyer, the private yacht. 

And a fast-traveling ocean liner of twenty 
thousand tons will make beautiful things out 
of the water she passes through and pushes 
aside. The little dash of spray under the ves- 
sel's fore-foot is of slight interest, but the tre- 
mendous furrow turned and rolled out by the 
shoulder of the ship is worth some study. A 
wall of water goes bumping, dancing outward 
with a shock that immediately shows in mil- 
lions of tiny bubbles, in vivid greens and blues, 
and in curling crests of foam. With foam 
comes dazzling light; and nothing is so daz- 
zling as foam, save only the newly fallen snow. 
A probable explanation of whiteness in the 
snow is that each flake is a crystal — a prism — 
that shows on its edges all the colors of the 
rainbow. Color is merely disintegrated white 
light and, when thrown together in such masses 
as the snow crystals, it re-combines and comes 
to the eye as an intense light. In the case of 
foam the break of the wave allows air to inter- 
mingle with the water. Countless tiny bub- 
bles, half water, half air, are brought into 
existence; and each one of these displays on its 
surface the colors of the rainbow. The unity 



The ship's 
furrow. 



Whiteness 
of foam. 



102 



THE OPAL SEA 



in mass of these colors again produces to our 
eyes the effect of white light. 

It is of no great importance, so far as the 
foam at the shoulder showing white is con- 
cerned, what may be the local color of the water 
through which the ship is traveling. Some- 
times there is a great milky crest of it thrust 
up and out from the ship while slipping back- 
ward into the hollow are long strings and rib- 
bons of white. Very beautiful are these pat- 
terns of white that appear with some regularity 
up and down the dark hollows of the first 
waves. They are soon dashed to pieces by the 
wash along the steamer's side; but, for a mo- 
ment or more, they are flung into forms that 
suggest thin drifts of snow upon blue-green 
ice, or festoonings of lace upon an emerald 
field, or, again, ropes of diamonds decorating 
mirrors in some winter palace of the fairies. 

Nor are these festoonings always pure white. 
At evening when the sun is on the horizon, its 
light may strike the clouds above or abeam of 
the ship, and turn them lilac or yellow hued 
or rose colored. This cloud-coloring is in- 
stantly repeated in the foam of the shoulder 
swell — sometimes showing as pink on aqua- 
marine and again as gold on deep blue. The 
vagaries of light with their consequent side re- 



OCEAN PLAINS 



103 



flections are innumerable, utterly impossible of 
recording; and yet always astonishing with 
each new manifestation. 

The light that lies in foam is not eclipsed 
when the sun goes under a cloud. It is still 
very white; and even at midnight, with no 
moon or stars, the break of the wave is dis- 
tinctly seen as a pale flash in the darkness. 
Every one who has experienced a heavy storm 
at sea will not forget the ghostly gleam of the 
white caps in the night and the great dash of 
white waves up and over the ship's bow. The 
darkest night with clouds will not completely 
eclipse the light of the wave crest. 

Up from the foam of the wave is flung the 
spray of the wave. The thin cap is tossed in 
air by the lateral thrust of the wave base 
and is scattered into tiny drops that flash in 
the sunlight. The brightness of this spray is, 
again, dazzling. It seems like liquid light 
flung skyward from some subterranean foun- 
tain. Even as it flashes it seems to disappear 
in water dust, to be blown to pieces by the 
winds, and drifted aft as a mist. When it 
reaches the proper angle, and is struck by the 
sun anew, the mist turns into a rainbow. It 
is only a little bow — an amusing little arch — 
that we watch with perhaps a languid interest. 



Wave crests 
at night. 



Spray 



Rainbows. 



104 



THE OPAL SEA 



The ship's 
wake. 



Silver light 
in the wake. 



Phosphores- 
cent light. 



Frequently there are several of them at once 
and they travel with the ship, maintaining 
their form and place, as long as the spray 
drives and the sun shines. 

Back from the dash of the fore-foot and the 
spray of the shoulder are the tumbled waters 
of the stern — the waters beaten into tiny bub- 
bles by the churn of the propellers. The larger 
bubbles soon disappear — evanesce as it were — 
but far away behind the effect remains, the 
wake is apparent. This slash in the sea shows 
not blue but green, the local color of the water ; 
and not until long after the ship has passed 
does it smooth over and return to its reflected 
sea-blue. At night the trail of the steamer 
instead of being green, sometimes looks like a 
pathway of shining silver running through 
deep pansy-purple. But this is due to no nor- 
mal coloring. It is phosphorescent light — 
something that will bear a word of explanation. 

It seems that the surface of the ocean is, in 
certain areas, covered with swarms of animal- 
culse. Drifting upon the water the passing of 
the ship disturbs these small creatures, and, in 
fright or anger, they emit a white light like a 
tiny spark of electricity. It flashes for a mo- 
ment and then goes out to be renewed again 
in a few moments. When the ship rushes 



OCEAN PLAINS 



105 



through a great drift of these minute organ- 
isms, and millions of them are overset and 
frightened into fire, the effect upon the sea is 
very marked. It glows like a metallic surface. 
This is perhaps seen at its best from the taff- 
rail looking down the wake; but the bow and 
sides of the ship — wherever the water is dis- 
turbed — will show lines of pale fire as well, 
while outside of the disturbed area the sea re- 
mains its normal darkness. A disturbance of 
the surface is the usual cause of this phenom- 
ena; though in southern seas oftentimes there 
are great areas of animalcule that, of their 
own volition, will glow at night and cast a 
light upon spars, and sails, and human faces 
almost as powerful as moonlight. 

Equatorial waters are the most favorable for 
phosphorescent appearances though similar ap- 
pearances are frequently seen at the colder 
north. The tropical seas, with their heated sur- 
faces and thick strata of atmosphere, are also 
famous places for electric phenomena and for 
illusions of the air. Here is seen the St. Elmo's 
Light, the fata morgana or misplaced image, 
and also the true sea mirage. The last named 
appears when the sea is calm, the weather very 
hot, and the air strata above the water are very 
thick. It looks like a long, glittering band of 



Fields or 
animalculce. 



St. Elmo's 
Light. 



106 



THE OPAL SEA 



Sea 
mirage. 



Fata 
morgana. 



The ship in 
the air. 



silver lying along the horizon, and quivers 
slightly or shifts place not unlike the aurora. 
The sailors explain it by saying the water is 
"reflecting itself," and possibly that is true, 
the water reflection being seen upon the air; 
but a similar illusion is produced by the sky 
being reflected from the denser air that lies 
along the surface of the sea. 

The water mirage is a very beautiful illusion 
but not one of frequent occurrence. Nor is 
the fata morgana, where things are seen out of 
their place and "upside down," an everyday 
happening. The object is generally noticed 
"looming" high above the horizon, and is 
usually a ship, an island, or a coast city. Sea 
captains frequently tell tales of seeing their 
port of destiny in the sky long before the port 
itself comes up over the ocean's edge; and the 
sight of a ship in the air, hanging masts down- 
ward, is something that almost every sailor can 
spin a yarn about. The reversed ship does not, 
however, appear every day or every year; and 
many a tourist, boastful of the number of trips 
to Europe he has made, has never seen it at 
all. The cause for the distorted and misplaced 
image is the thick strata of low-lying air which 
bends the light ray so that we see not in a 
straight line but in a curved line. From ex- 



OCEAlSr PLAINS 



107 



perience we think we see the ship in the air 
by the straight ray, whereas in reality we see 
the ship on the water down below the horizon 
line, by the bent ray. 

The sea air, when it becomes thickened by 
heat or is moisture-laden, often shows as a 
silver or gray or pale blue mist. Thin sheets 
of it may be seen in the early morning hover- 
ing above the surface of the water, making per- 
haps strange illusions— strange likenesses to 
things seen upon the land. For frequently 
mist or fog will throw a yellowish reflection 
on the water giving it a look like drifted sand; 
and the patches of blue sky reflected in spots 
through the yellow produce the strange effect 
of blue lakes in a desert. The space directly 
overhead usually shows no definite patches of 
mist and from its diffused white light it would 
seem as though the upper air held the mist in 
solution. It is certainly a moist upper air that 
is responsible for such effects as "the white 
horizon " ; and it is the same air, hanging above 
the still sea and reflected in it, that gives the 
pearl-like surface of the water so much fancied 
by our modern marine painters. 

A morning mist veil at sea stretching across 
the illuminated east, making the rose of the 
clouds and the azure of the sky look faint and 



Effect of 
mist. 



The white 
horizon. 



108 



THE OPAL SEA 



The mist 
veil as a 
creator of 
color- 
beauty. 



Lunar 
rainbows. 



dream-like, is always a potent source of beauty. 
And of mystery. How cunningly Turner used 
it to throw a glamour and a charm about his 
towers and turrets and cities by the sea ! How 
cleverly and yet how truly Monet, in his 
Thames pictures, revealed the beauties of sun- 
light by filtering them through this same veil- 
ing, this same beautiful mist of the morning! 
As for Claude Lorraine, whose name our Eng- 
lish friends still invoke as though no modern 
had ever reached up to him, save Turner, what 
charm would his classic bays and harbors pos- 
sess if it were not for their golden sea-mist of 
sunset ! 

And what pictures, never painted by master 
ancient or modern, are to be seen by the 
weather rail at night when the lunar rainbow 
with its arch of subtle light-and-dark follows 
on the ship's beam, when the purple water 
flashes through the patches of the mist, and 
overhead the moon is like a silver disk, the 
stars like phosphorescent points ! The summer 
nights upon the .ZEgean when the small island 
steamer sweeps you past Syrian ships becalmed 
— their hulls lost in the low-lying vapors, their 
sails looming above the drifts into the white 
moonlight — are never to be forgotten. They 
are only impressions of intangible light and 



OCEAN PLAINS 



109 



color, momentary revelations of pictorial po- 
etry without literary meaning or association; 
and yet very insistent revelations, very striking 
impressions. We do not readily define them 
but we feel their effect upon us, nevertheless. 
It is an effect analogous perhaps to that pro- 
duced by music — pale music in a minor key, 
dreamy music that moves in slow-heaving ca- 
dences or faints in realms of sun-shot haze or 
gleams in chords of lustrous silver. 

The division line between mist and fog lies 
somewhere in the aerial envelope. The same 
indefinite line separates fog from cloud, though 
they are practically one and the same thing. 
Both are visible vapors, the one several thou- 
sand feet in the air, the other lying along the 
surface of the earth or sea. Both differ from 
mist only in that they are more concentrated 
in form and strata. And there are beauties of 
color in the fog as in the mist. It is by no 
means such an unalloyed evil as the nervous 
person who dreads a steamer collision fancies. 
Instead of dull leaden hues the fog is often 
luminous with pale blues, lilacs, mauves, and 
silvers; and it is never remotely approached to 
black, though the term " black fog " is applied 
to banks denser than the ordinary. The colors 
are not, however, usually seen because people 



Summer 
nights on 
the JEgean 



Fogs at 



Black fog 



110 



THE OPAL SEA 



Beauty of 
fog effects. 



Icebergs. 



will not try to discover anything but discom- 
fort in a fog. The drive of the steamer 
through the vapor pall, with the siren shrieking 
every few moments, is counted one of the hor- 
rors of the North Atlantic voyage. And, true 
enough, it is not always a pleasant or agreeable 
happening ; but the fog is an ocean beauty none 
the less. Standing beside the lookout at the 
bow as the steamer plunges forward into the un- 
known, each new scrap of sea is eagerly scanned 
as it rushes aft along the ship, the waters flash 
and disappear, the fog-bank cleaves in twain, 
we speed on and away through changing clouds 
of blue and silver. There is an exhilaration 
about it to which the warning note of the siren 
perhaps adds the spice of danger. 

The danger is the more real on the New- 
foundland Banks when the water and the air 
suddenly grow cold. That is the first indica- 
tion of icebergs; and ice is perhaps more fatal 
in collision than a sister ship or a water-logged 
derelict. It is some time perhaps before the 
bergs appear on the horizon. When they finally 
lift into view we are perhaps surprised by their 
modest dimensions, and wonder that such 
small scraps of ice could cause so great a chill 
upon the waters. But doubtless we fail to con- 
sider that more than four-fifths of the white 



OCEAIST PLAINS 



111 



monument lies below the water level. The 
mass underneath is enormous, though how, even 
with all its bulk, a dozen bergs or less can chill 
water and air twenty or thirty miles away is 
something of a puzzle. 

Close to view the iceberg is often wonderful 
in color. With different lights it takes all tints 
of azure, turquoise, and Nile green; and in its 
shadows it shows all shades of blue and violet. 
The sheer ice wall is usually a dark sea-green, 
suggesting the local color of the water from 
which it has been formed; but when the sky is 
clouded it often shows a dead-white surface. 
After it is honeycombed by sun and disinte- 
grated by warm winds it loses much of its 
bright coloring. In form the floating berg 
takes on fantastic shapes, because the harder 
cores of it are the last to melt; and they often 
stand in strange towers, columns, and turrets 
after the softer parts have cracked and fallen 
away. 

The northern fields of ice, with all the 
splendor of the arctic twilights and midnights, 
the auroras, sun-dogs, brilliant colorings and 
clear reflections are wonderful enough, if we 
are to believe the tales of our explorers; but 
they seem to have little to do with the sea. 
Once water is frozen and its pliant surface 



Color of the 
icebergs 



Turreted 
forms of ice- 
bergs. 



Polar ice- 
fields 



112 



THE OPAL SEA 



Snow at 
sea 



Falling 
rain 



destroyed, its identity is gone. The pack-ice 
and hummock-ice do not even suggest frozen 
waves. They are merely a gorging and heaping 
of the ice-fields. 

Snow, too, seems foreign to the sea, though, 
of course, it does fall into the open oceans in 
the temperate and arctic zones. Even a cross- 
ing of the North Atlantic during the winter 
months is frequently accompanied by a snow 
storm. It is all in the air — a driving of white 
particles across a dark sky, down, down to a 
darker sea. Instantly the snow touches the 
water it perishes, vanishes without leaving the 
slightest impression or trace of itself. Some- 
times in a very heavy downfall it will make the 
sea surface look white for a few minutes; but 
the salt water soon absorbs it, destroys it. 

Eain at sea when it falls in vertical lines 
and strikes flat water does so with considerable 
force. The impact of each drop makes a pit 
in the surface, a splash, and a rebound. When 
it is falling rapidly, it not only creates some- 
thing of a roar but also something of a bub- 
bling surface upon the sea. In the tropics, 
where the drops are often heavy and close to- 
gether, the sea will be foaming- white even in 
the darkness of night; and after the rain has 
passed the surface will smooth out, look oily 



OCEAN PLAINS 



113 



and glassy, and rest perfectly still as though 
beaten into quietude. 

The driving rain that waves through the air, 
like the folds of a huge flag unfurling in the 
breeze, is something very different. The drops 
are small and fierce enough in their impact, but 
striking the sea diagonally they make no pit- 
ting. Tkey seem to lash the surface with long 
lines of trembling spray, or break it into little 
waves that go shivering and quivering in er- 
ratic dashes with each new gust; but the effect 
is only of momentary duration. In heavy seas, 
when the wind is blowing with hurricane force, 
the fall of rain is even less marked. The wind 
seems to drive it into mist and mingle it with 
scud and rack, until at times they are not dis- 
tinguishable apart. 

Sometimes before thunder showers and 
squalls of wind comes an odd feature of the 
sea — the water spout. It is caused by wind 
and, so far as I know, is the same phenomenon 
as the great dust whirls which one sees on the 
deserts. The dust whirl is a long, thin column, 
sometimes twenty-five hundred feet in height, 
which moves in a solemn, stately fashion across 
the sands, its head in the sky, its foot on the 
earth, catching up sand and dust in its hollow 
trough, whirling it high in air, and finally, 



Drilling 
rain. 



The water 
spout. 



114 



THE OPAL SEA 



The spout; 
how formed. 



Evening 
light after 



when loosed from the vortex, allowing it to 
fall slowly back to earth. The water spoilt 
is not unlike it but is a trifle more energetic. 
It usually forms just under the black wind 
clouds that immediately precede the gray rain 
clouds; and it extends down from the clouds 
to the water in a " spout " or funnel. When it 
meets the water it causes some agitation, but 
not nearly so much as is pictured by imagina- 
tive writers. Sometimes water or its spray is 
carried up in the whirling funnel, but usually 
there is only a foaming and dashing of the 
sea surface directly under its foot. After ten 
or fifteen minutes the spout generally breaks 
and the contents (if there be any) descend as 
rain. Its appearance is usually very deceptive. 
We think it is a column of water extending 
from sea to cloud, but in reality it is a column 
of mist surrounding a central axis of rarefac- 
tion. It moves with the storm and often has 
brother spouts for company. 

Beautiful, indeed, is the clearing away at 
evening after rain and storm, when with lifting 
clouds and vapors comes deep blue sky; and 
perhaps far away a faint gray something is seen 
taking form along the horizon. Land ho ! is the 
cry forward. But where ? It is not readily seen 
even when pointed out to us. Our eyes grope 



OCEAN PLAINS 



115 



along the dim sea-line looking for land, which 
is really the last thing we should look for if 
we wish to see it. Presently we seize upon a 
pale outline that seems to enclose a pale blue 
cloud. That is usually the first appearance of 
land from the sea, especially if it be a moun- 
tainous coast. The rocky top shows first. It 
is seen through a thinner stratum of air than 
that lying close down along the water, and 
hence appears clearer and nearer. As we ap- 
proach, it begins to darken in color and take 
sharper outline against the sky; but it still re- 
mains as a flat cloud-like affair with its base 
cut off by thick layers of atmosphere. When 
it finally begins to show depth as well as width 
and height, it also begins to reach down and 
have a foundation in the sea. Last of all is 
seen the white foam of the beach or the dash of 
waves upon the rocky coast. 

Quite the opposite of this is the approach 
to a low-lying shore where there are no moun- 
tains or headlands or even tall trees, where 
there are long lines of sand spits and flattened 
dunes creeping down to the water's edge. The 
land now shows as a long half-submerged line 
upon the water like an enormous sea serpent 
stretched out asleep. It lifts a little as we 
approach, shows inequalities here and there; 



Land in 
sight. 



Appearance 
of rocky 
coasts. 



Appearance 
of low- 
lying 
shores. 



116 



THE OPAL SEA 



A pproach 
to lagoon 
islands. 



Islands of 
the Pacific. 



but it is some time before it takes definite body 
and becomes substantial shore. 

Still different is the approach to what mari- 
ners call the " low " islands or " lagoon " 
islands — the coral formations of the tropic 
seas. Again, the last thing to look for is an 
island. The cocoanut palms, mangroves, and 
other large-leaved trees that usually grow upon 
these atolls, make up, at a distance, a band of 
olive-green that cuts in between the gray-blue 
of the sky and the deeper blue of the sea. It 
rests between the sea and sky for a long time 
as a mere puzzling coloration. As we come 
nearer, however, another band of cream color 
forms under the green and becomes recogniza- 
ble as a beach ; while still below the cream color 
is a line of shining white, indicating perhaps 
where breakers are dashing over coral reefs. 

The rounded island of the Pacific, lying 
like an emerald set in a sapphire sea, how 
beautiful it seems to wanderers of the watery 
waste! Low down it rests upon the great 
bosom — an oasis in the desert, an island of 
palms in the wilderness, a haven of rest with- 
out tumult save of the surf, without sound save 
of the surge, without time save of the tide. 
Born in no convulsive throe of nature but 
builded skyward through many a year by the 



OCEAN PLAINS 



117 



ceaseless energy of tiny polyps, a mere point 
of limestone in the deep, how firmly it with- 
stands the wash of the sea and the wear of the 
wave! Tides ebb and flow, winds come and 
storms rush by, but the citadel grows stronger, 
lifts higher, becomes more beautiful. With its 
ferns and shrubs and waving palms serenely 
it rests under the southern sun and sky, a mere 
speck in space; yet what a refuge, what an 
earthly paradise! 

Those clustered islands of the Pacific that 
welcomed Cook and sheltered the mutineers of 
the Bounty, what romance clings about them 
still ! Utopias of the sea, where nature al- 
ways smiles and art is still an unknown story, 
were ever yet such fairylands for poetry and 
song ! And how inevitably they provoke a con- 
trast and pose again the question of human 
happiness ! What vantage comes to us from 
a boasted civilization, how bettered are we by 
place and power and wealth? Men beat down 
friend and foe alike, and uproot beauty on 
the earth and in their own hearts, to gain an 
evidence of riches; but what avails the horde 
that brings no joy? Heap surplus upon 
abundance, crown knowledge with enlighten- 
ment if you will; but a naked savage by these 
southern shores with his bread-fruit, his sun- 



Coral 
groups. 



Romance 
of the 
South Sea 
islands. 



118 



THE OPAL SEA 



Concerning 
happiness. 



The modern 
view of hap- 
piness. 



shine, and his music of the seas is more con- 
tent. Happiness is not hidden in a bank vault 
or a philosophy; it is in the free air, under the 
blue sky, in the mountains, on the prairies, by 
the seashore. Contentment is not attained by 
possessions or positions, or pursuit about the 
globe ; it comes to those who will but fold their 
hands and wait. 

Old truths these — old when the world was 
young — but the new generation flouts them, 
scorns them, laughs at them, thinking that the 
tale of human happiness shall be different with 
this new time. It nurses the strange belief that 
all the good things of life can be had by a 
bold dash in the lists of Mammon, that every 
prize is there and within the reach of the 
knight who will but ride boldly. Ever the 
golden bugles are calling, calling to enter the 
lists. And the gentle song of the sea, wooing 
to love and to beauty, is lost in the clash of the 
conflict. 



CHAPTEE VI 
THE WIND'S WILL 

The word " restless " that we contimially 
apply to the sea is somewhat inappropriate and 
misleading. If there is one thing above an- 
other that the sea would avoid it is restless- 
ness. It is ever seeking to keep still, to lie flat, 
to maintain its normal equilibrium; but it is 
ever being pushed out of place and jostled into 
dancing points by the winds. The winds are 
the disturbers of the peace, the uneasy wan- 
derers that keep driving the water hither and 
yon, from deep to reef and from reef to deep 
again. At first the water offers some resist- 
ance, some defense. It is not a powerful op- 
position, however, and the winds soon break 
through it ; but the water has a way of reassert- 
ing itself at the first opportunity. 

The defense is merely the covering that 
spreads over water when not in motion — the 
skin that holds it intact until shattered by 
some sudden shock or jar. This skin is an 
elastic envelope that often requires a hard 
119 



The dis- 
turbing 
winds. 



120 



THE OPAL SEA 



The skin of 
water drops. 



Covering of 
the sea- 
surface. 



Stretching 
of the 
covering. 



shaking to break. The dewdrop on a leaf may- 
be rolled about very roughly without losing its 
form ; and the beaded drops that edge a window 
sash in time of storm are not easily shaken 
from their moorings. As for the form of the 
ordinary raindrop, and its persistence in round- 
ness even when hurled violently through the 
air, they are both due to the skin or envelope 
that encloses the drop. 

This same thin covering protects the surface 
of the sea in periods of calm. It has no name 
(though the Provengaux speak of a mer dliuile) 
and is hardly to be analyzed; yet its presence 
is apparent enough. When a little puff of 
wind strikes the surface a stretching of the 
envelope is noticeable. A ruffling and a quiv- 
ering seem to run over the water. But these 
" flaws " of wind or " cat's-paws " come and go 
and leave no permanent disorder. The skin 
gives like thin india-rubber, but it does not 
part or break. It is really quite tough and 
when oil is added to it (as sometimes in storm) 
the mixture or combination is strong enough 
to baffle a stiff breeze. 

When, however, the puffs of wind grow too 
strong or too steady, the shivers and quivers 
that run across the water at last break the 
surface here and there. The skin envelope is 



THE WIND'S WILL 



121 



perhaps ripped like a piece of tissue paper. 
The wind now has a rough edge to push against 
instead of a smooth surface; and it drives so 
hard at this point that the water just ahead of 
it is forced upward into a tiny wedge or wave. 
The wedge itself at once becomes an upright 
face that catches the wind. It is driven ahead 
with a push that causes its top to outrun its 
base and thus sink forward and downward. 
The fall displaces and drives into wave form 
the water ahead, helping on the further break- 
ing of the envelope and the formation of new 
wedges. Presently the whole surface of the 
waters is covered by tiny waves, flashing with 
a thousand facets, and making what is called 
" a ruffled sea/' 

Sometimes just before an approaching storm, 
and apparently without any wind, there is an 
unaccountable agitation of the surface. The 
small waves seem much excited, leaping up in 
little points, and breaking off abruptly with a 
dull swash. But usually the disturbance of the 
surface increases only by continued pressure 
of the wind. The ruffled sea passes into the 
" chopping " or " choppy " sea by gradual tran- 
sitions. The more upright surface exposed 
and the higher the apex of the wave, the greater 
the force hurled against it, and the stronger 



Breaking 
of the 
covering. 



The ruffled 
sea. 



The sea 
before a 
storm. 



122 



THE OPAL SEA 



The choppy 
sea. 



Favorite 
spots for 
choppy 



the drive forward of the wave itself. The 
water wedges, under such conditions, soon rise 
and fall in regular series and move with a 
well-defined drift in one direction. They are 
not yet of great height, nor thick through from 
base to base, nor rolling like the smooth un- 
dulations of the tropics. They are thin sharp 
waves that have a way of pitching upward 
— " dancing " it is sometimes called — and a 
spiteful fashion of striking the gunwales of a 
small boat and dashing water over its occu- 
pants. 

The "choppy" sea (by which is meant a 
cut-up or an up-and-down sea) is usually met 
with where the wind is blowing against an 
ocean current or a tide coming down a bay. 
The English Channel is its favorite haunt, es- 
pecially when the wind is blowing up from the 
sea; though it is seen everywhere when winds 
are variable and tides contrary. The region of 
the Trade Winds seems sacred to the long roller, 
but even here a tropical squall will beat up the 
short wave ; and around the Cape of Good Hope 
they ride the backs of enormous swells, main- 
taining an identity of their own even though 
joined to a greater movement. 

The " white cap " adorns almost all the 
shorter forms of waves. It is merely the thin 



THE WIND'S WILL 



123 



end of the wedge pushed up so high that, 
unable to sustain itself, it curls, bends for- 
ward and downward, and breaks into foam 
as it falls. Almost always it is pushed ahead 
by the drive of the wind against it, the heavier 
base not being able to keep up with the crest; 
and in stormy weather it is frequently whipped 
away by the winds and driven through the air 
for long distances in the form of flying spray. 
In an ordinary gale of wind these white caps 
("Flocks of Proteus" is the pedant's phrase 
for them) are to be seen in every direction, 
breaking usually with regularity, and flecking 
with white the whole surface of the sea. 

Very beautiful from the ship do these crests 
appear. We watch them flashing in spots of 
light hour after hour, and think of the ocean 
as at play in the sunlight, when in reality it is 
simply being buffeted by the winds. The waves 
dash here and there as though frightened and 
in their eagerness to escape sometimes break 
against each other, often confounding confusion 
in a small roar of foam. 

But there is another side to this white- 
capped ocean that no man knows so well as 
the swimmer who has wrestled with it. With 
eyes down at the water's edge, and head rid- 
ing up the slope of an oncoming wave, the 



White caps. 



How they 
break. 



Appearance 
of white 
caps. 



The swim- 
mer in a 
choppy sea. 



124 



THE OPAL SEA 



A danger- 
ous sea. 



Waves with 
a half gale. 



outlook is anything but assuring. The ridges 
appear enormous, the horizon instead of being 
flat is as ragged as a sky line of snow-clad 
Alps, and the spray seems to reach to the very 
zenith — white spray leaping upward at a cold, 
white sky. When the swimmer has swung 
down into a wave hollow he seems walled with 
blue-green water, and when he dives through 
the crest and comes out on the sloping back 
he seems to see legions of waves hurrying to- 
ward him from every point of the compass. It 
is a wearying, worrying sea. The waves never 
cease, the crest must be continually avoided; 
and ever and anon the unexpected cross wave 
breaks over the swimmer's head with a wild 
rush. If he comes through alive he never 
forgets to his dying day the look of that foam- 
ing sea. 

White caps are accompaniments of the larger 
as well as the shorter waves. With a strong 
wind both waves and crests increase in size, 
but there are fewer of them. The water seems 
to swing in broader and longer ridges and there 
is no great regularity in the wave forms. Ow- 
ing to flaws in the wind cross waves are set 
in motion, tons of water are pitched here and 
there at odd angles, the sea becomes " lumpy " 
in spots and " full of holes " in other places. 



THE WIND'S WILL 



125 



The crests now appear of toppling height, and 
when they break they do so with a roaring 
swish of spray. This is what the sailors would 
call " a rough sea 3> and the wind is " variable " 
or " a half gale." 

The storm waves which appear with very 
high winds are peculiar to the winds that form 
them. If the pressure is steady and continued 
from one direction they have a tendency to 
regularity of movement; but not if the wind 
comes from thunder storms or cyclones which 
last only a few hours. These gusts merely lash 
the ocean, tossing and twisting the surface 
and, after much bluster, subside as rapidly 
as they rose. Indeed, the original dash of 
wind and rain has a tendency to beat down 
the water instead of driving it forward in 
ridges; and in any event the thunder storm 
is usually v much too short-lived to start a pro- 
cession of heavy waves. But under the long 
and strong push of a three-days wind — a 
" northeaster " — the sea heaps up in great val- 
leys and ridges that grow higher and heavier 
with the increase of the gale. They are not 
always foam-capped, but frequently a wave of 
greater bulk than the others will come push- 
ing and shouldering along, its apex wedged up 
so high that the unsubstantial fabric of water 



Storm 
waves. 



Thunder 
storms and 
cyclones. 



Effect of 
"the north- 
easter." 



126 



THE OPAL SEA 



Spume and 
water dust. 



Flying 
scud. 



A stormy 
sea from 
the ship's 
cross-trees. 



cannot sustain it, and it lets go with a crash, 
pitching forward in a long whirl of white. 

Upon the backs of these great waves are 
many smaller waves, thousands of broken facet- 
ings of light, ruffles, rips, and tears in the 
transparent mantle; and after the first or sec- 
ond day there will be patches and broken 
wreaths of spume — battered and beaten water 
dust — hanging along the waves or rolling from 
ridge to hollow in an aimless and lifeless way. 
When the wind reaches hurricane force the sea 
surface is half -hidden by its own spray. Sheets 
of water are continually lifted from the high 
ridges by the wind, blown to fine rain, and 
driven with a whistle through the rigging of 
the ship. This spray is mingled tempestuously 
with the moisture of the clouds; for though it 
may not rain there are usually clouds, lying 
low down over the ocean, the under parts of 
which are wrenched away and hurled through 
the air as flying scud. 

Seen from the cross-trees of a ship — the 
cross-trees where you cling and swing back- 
ward and forward over the water as the ship 
plunges with an awkward stumble or rights 
with a violent snap — a stormy sea is a sight 
to be remembered. There is no far view ob- 
tainable. The blend of spray and cloud rack 



THE WIND'S WILL 



127 



make a watery atmosphere that shuts down 
upon the sea at short range. Overhead there 
is a gray turmoil of torn clouds and all around 
is the pitch and toss of the wind-driven water. 
Its color is generally steel-gray or olive with 
foam- white for the high lights; but in the 
break of the wave on the ridges and in the 
swash of the water against the ship's side there 
are wonderful greens churned into being — 
beryl-greens, emerald-greens, bottle-greens. 

Very striking are these colors in storm; and 
yet they are rather overlooked, forgotten, in the 
wail of the wind through the rigging, the drive 
of spray, and, above all, the forms and move- 
ments of the waves. All varieties of rolling, 
tumbling, tossing waves are here — long lines of 
the foam-crested roller, sharp edges of the rag- 
ged cross wave, great banks of water that push 
but never break, spiteful caps that break but 
never push, waves upon the backs of waves, lone 
waves, double waves, thin waves, wild waves. 
There are never two of them quite alike. And 
the continuous untiring volley of them ! The 
wonderful movement and restless energy of 
them ! The curling, twisting, writhing beauty 
of them ! They are always graceful. The elas- 
ticity of the material makes it impossible for 
them to lack in flowing line or want in just 



Color of 
water in 
storm. 



Forms of 
the waves. 



The grace 
of waves in 
motion. 



128 



THE OPAL SEA 



" Waves 

mountain 

high." 



The height 
of storm 
waves. 



proportion. Sometimes they are broken by the 
heaviness of the wind or by cross surges; but 
usually the outlines hold intact and the waves 
sweep on and out of sight with a serpentine 
grace unknown to any other element. 

The size of these wave forms in mid-ocean 
is something not usually known to the tourist 
crossing summer seas. The " waves mountain 
high" that he may chance to meet with in a 
September gale are only fifteen or twenty feet 
high; and the hurricane waves of mid-winter, 
which he seldom sees, do not rise more than 
fifty feet at their greatest. They look more 
formidable than their statistics; but I believe 
it is generally conceded that no one has ever 
seen a wave more than fifty feet in height on 
the North Atlantic. In the Antarctic and in 
the Cape of Good Hope region, where there 
are long and strong winds with very deep seas, 
the height is greater, especially with the ex- 
ceptional wave called by sailors a " gray-back " ; 
but even there one meets with no " mountains " 
of water. From hollow to crest in a perpendic- 
ular line it is doubtful if any wave ever rises 
so high as a hundred feet. This of course re- 
fers to waves on the open sea and not along 
shore. A breaker may be dashed up a rocky 
coast to a greater height than that by its tre- 



THE WIND'S WILL 



129 



mendous velocity and the push of water behind 
it; but the coast breaker is not the same as 
the free mid-ocean roller. 

Modest as the smaller figures may be they, 
nevertheless, represent a mighty moving power ; 
and a sea covered with fifty-foot waves is a 
fearsome sea. It is never seen in shallow 
depths nor in narrow bodies of water. The 
English Channel, made up of much fresh water 
filtered through the Baltic (and fresh water, 
being lighter than salt water, may rise to a 
greater height), is only a shallow arm of the 
ocean; and for all the " great guns " that blow 
through it the waves are not of great height. 
They look formidable enough, and every trav- 
eler to or from the Continent has his tale to tell 
about the horrors of the Channel. It is a place 
where choppy seas foam into cataracts, where 
bulkheads and docks are battered to pieces in 
storm, where cliffs are undermined, and vessels 
are wrecked, and men by scores are drowned; 
but it never knows the heavy waves of the open 
Atlantic. Its waters are not deep enough, 
its open spaces are not wide enough, its mov- 
ing wedges cannot travel far enough to lift into 
ocean waves. 

And yet the Channel can show its white 
teeth in storm in a way that commands both 



The English 
Channel. 



Dangers 
of the 
Channel. 



130 



THE OPAL SEA 



Winds 
along the 
Channel 
and the 
North Sea. 



Everything 
driven off 
the water. 



Storm on 
the coast of 
Holland. 



respect and fear. The winds usually find a 
trough of low pressure along this waterway to 
the North Sea, and rush through it with great 
fury. Sometimes for days at a time they 
blow, carrying with them low clouds torn into 
fragments, driving ahead of them spin-drift 
ripped from the surface of the water, and send- 
ing the rain flying in lines with an almost flat 
trajectory. In such blows everything living 
or movable is driven off the water. The 
packets cease running, the sailing vessels seek 
harbor, the wild ducks fly inland to the quieter 
bays and harbors; and even the sea gulls and 
curlews will be found back on the English 
meadows, each one squatting behind a tuft of 
grass or a little knoll of ground, taking the 
wind and rain with a diagonal slant of body 
from head to tail, and riding out the storm as 
best he can. 

As you come down from the interior to the 
dunes of Holland in such a storm the effect 
is weird, almost unearthly. The light is gray, 
the clouds are blown to pieces, the sweep of the 
wind is terrific. Flying sand cuts and stings 
the face, it is difficult to stand upright for the 
wind; and to escape it you are glad to avail 
yourself of any hollow in the hills — a hollow 
perhaps under some dyke with the sound of 



THE WIND'S WILL 



131 



the sea on the other side dashing ten or fifteen 
feet above your head. Notwithstanding you 
are in the dunes and away from all buildings 
there is a reverberating roar in the wind that 
speaks of the shock in the upper air; and 
though you are down in a hollow there is an- 
other roar that comes rolling in from the sea. 
The tumult of the waves is felt before it is 
seen. Above the tops of the outer dunes great 
sheets of sand whirl through the air and shut 
out the view. In the momentary pauses of 
gust following gust — between the sheets — 
comes a glimpse of the North Sea. It is not 
blue or green or opal but tawny and yellow; 
not clear as crystal with snow-white crests, 
but rolled full of grit from the beaches, 
dirty-looking as though churned with bottom 
mud. For a half-mile out from shore all the 
water looks like cafe-au-lait; and the foam on 
the waves, the froth on the beach, are as 
whipped cream. The waves are driving in 
long diagonal ranks — each one traveling along 
the coast, breaking on its beach end, and finally 
disappearing from view in sand and spray. 
Beyond the coffee-colored shore water, where 
the depth is greater, a clearer sea shows. It 
is still yellowish, it even borders upon topaz 
without being so transparent; but from the 



Coming 
down to the 



Look of the 
North Sea 
in storm. 



132 



THE OPAL SEA 



Night on 
the North 
Sea. 



The drive 
of the wind. 



shore it merely counts as a color streak. Far- 
ther out everything disappears in a confusion 
of spray, mist, and cloud. There is left only 
a great gray veil — half water, half sky — that 
the eye will not penetrate. 

Night on the North Sea or the Channel 
(seen again from the ship's cross-trees) is even 
more weird and unearthly; especially when 
there are lightning flashes to illumine the yel- 
low dunes of Holland or the white cliffs of 
England. In that pale violet light the dunes 
look like a greater and more tempestuous ocean, 
the cliffs gleam like phosphorus, the sum- 
mer hotels along the beach at Ostend rear into 
enchanted castles, and the tawny sea seems a 
vast waving desert of sand. And how that 
wind, blowing perhaps straight up the Channel, 
up the North Sea, wails through the rigging! 
Wee-ooh ! wee-oooh ! Oooooh ! Ooooooh ! Then 
a great dash of spray driving up through the 
bowsprit-shrouds, over the crow's-nest, against 
the spars; drenching everything above board, 
accompanied by the heavy pounding of a wave 
upon the turtleback — the water scurrying aft 
over hatches and deck-houses, and finally disap- 
pearing with a plunge over the rail into the dark 
of the sea. 

Wild enough is a night of storm on the 



THE WIND'S WILL 



133 



North Sea, but wilder still is that upon the 
open North Atlantic. In latitude 40 ° , longitude 
40°, in the region of " the brave west winds/' 
there is no yellow tinge to the water that comes 
from shallowness, no short wave that comes 
from hampered movement. Wind and water 
are both free and both of great strength. Hand 
in hand the waves come marching down upon 
the straining ship in inexhaustible sequence and 
energy. And occasionally, looming above the 
horizon line, swinging and pushing to the front, 
lifting, still lifting as it nears, comes a huge 
"gray-back." With the cry of warning from 
no one knows exactly where, every man- jack 
leaps into the rigging and takes a twist of a 
rope about him as the great comber strikes the 
shoulder of the ship, rushes up and over the 
bulwarks, and thunders across the trembling 
decks. In a moment it has vanished, but it is 
not long before the warning cry tells of an- 
other. All day and the night through perhaps, 
they come and go, the push and shock are ter- 
rific; and the wonder is that ribs of oak, or 
even of steel, can stand such buffeting without 
breaking. 

With the sailing vessel there is always some 
making of leeway, some bending and drifting 
with the wind, some swerving under the blow. 



Storm in 
latitude 40° 
longitude 
40°. 



The "gray- 
back." 



134 



THE OPAL SEA 



The plunge 
forivard of 
the ocean 
liner. 



The great 
storm on 
the coast. 



Not so with the ocean liner — the craft that sad 
sea-dogs tell us is only a floating hotel where we 
see the calm ocean from cabin windows. A 
great steamer going twenty knots an hour to 
the west, meeting a gale traveling sixty miles 
an hour to the east, will furnish forth more 
dashing waves in an hour than any ship, bark, 
or schooner ever encountered in a lifetime. 
The force of that sharp-nosed craft driven 
headlong against the seas simply shatters the 
water into dust, flings it up and over bow and 
bridge and sometimes smokestacks, whirls it 
aft over funnels and cabins with a blizzard 
velocity. The plunge of the bow into the 
smother of the sea, the heave-up with running 
decks, the clouds of driving spray with their 
long-drawn hiss-ss-sss along the whole ship's 
length, make up about as wild a sight as one 
ever witnesses upon the open ocean. 

And yet fiercer still seems the blow of the 
wave struck upon the rocks of the shore, and 
wilder far is the storm seen from some point 
of pines along the New England coast when a 
great gale is blowing. Such a storm usually 
anticipates itself with various warnings. Some- 
times the waves arrive before the wind, having 
outrun the storm that created them; but usu- 
ally the sea is still, flat, apparently hushed. 



THE WIND'S WILL 



135 



Presently a gentle puffing of the wind is no- 
ticeable, with a hum of the pine needles, and 
a strange little moaning along the clefts of the 
rocks. It may be some hours later before the 
sky clouds over, looks ominous or " greasy " as 
the sailors say; and the rain begins to fall. 
With the rain the wind begins to rise. The 
drenched pines gradually change their note 
from a hum to a wail not unlike the sound in 
the rigging of a ship — Wooooh ! Weee-ooooh ! 
The rising surge on the beach begins beat- 
ing out its regular Booooom-sh, Boooom-sh! 
Boooom-sh ! The wall of granite against which 
the waves go rushing gives back the hollow roar 
of the sea — War ! Waaar ! Waaarrrr ! Out of 
the mid-Atlantic pushed by the wind for a 
thousand miles or more come the great seas. 
Their impetus is something almost irresistible, 
their weight something enormous, their striking 
power something terrific. Higher and higher 
they rise in the crest as they near the coast, 

"Cliffs of emerald topped with snow- 
That lifted and lifted and then let go 
A great white avalanche of thunder." 

When they strike the rock nothing can stop 
their upward rush save disintegration and de- 
struction. The bulk of the wave is fended off 



How it 



Rain, wind 
and rising 
surge. 



The great 
seas 



136 



THE OPAL SEA 



The white- 
ridged 
ocean. 



The sea- 
gray color- 
ing. 



by the rock-bases; but this only shunts power 
upward into the crest which is shot into the 
air and blown to pieces over the upper cliffs 
with a long drawn Swissssssshhh ! 

What a sight it is, this white-ridged ocean 
rolling and clamoring toward the shore, this 
beaded water dashing high in air ! What fresh 
fury seems added by each new-coming wave, 
what slashing blows are dealt left and right, 
what convulsive twist and writhe and strain of 
the waters ! And riding down this chaos, bury- 
ing it out of sight at times, comes again that 
monster comber — the "gray-back" of the seas 
— swinging far up the rocks with a deafening 
thundering crash, its shattered crest flung high 
in air and carried landward like a cloud of 
steam. 

As the night shuts down perhaps the wind 
rises higher and higher, the mingling of spray 
and rain makes an atmosphere that can be felt, 
the meeting places of the elements are blurred, 
and the hue over all is a neutral gray, a sea- 
gray — the residuum of wrecked color. Far 
down along the coast the feeble flash of a light- 
house appears at intervals and out from the 
reef is heard in momentary gurglings the half- 
human sob of a bell-buoy rising, rolling, and 
sinking in the waves. Ghost-like in the dim 



THE WIND'S WILL 



137 



light reel and toss the white riders of the 
storm. Onward they come. Swash ! Boooooom ! 
Sssssss-ss! And the great eanldron under the 
cliff having flung forth its spume, halts, hesi- 
tates, sinks back upon itself, sucks out in a 
great undertow, then rises into a new crest 
higher than ever. Waaarrr ! Ssss-ssssss ! 
Weeeeeooooohhh ! 

All night long the pound against the cliffs 
and the tremble of the shore! All night the 
whistle of the spray-laden wind as it drives 
through the branches of the pines ! All night 
the curl and flash of the white crests on 
the open sea! By morning perhaps the wind 
has fallen, the clouds have vanished, the sun 
is forth ; and yet for many hours afterward the 
far ocean waves keep swashing against each 
other and collapsing in swirls of foam. Finally 
the sea runs down, the breakers sink; and at 
sunset as you walk along the beach all is quiet. 
It is hard to realize perhaps that the now 
smooth sea with its placid little swells could 
ever have worn such a savage front. But the 
traces of its fury still remain. The dunes are 
cut through by inlets here and piled high with 
wet sand there, the beaches are ripped and torn, 
the bowlders are rolled over, scarred and bat- 
tered; and the face- walls of the cliffs show 



Lighthouse 
and bell- 
buoy. 



The pound 
of waves. 



The sub- 
sidence. 



138 



THE OPAL SEA 



Wrecks and 
wreckers. 



The lost. 



Flotsam of 
the wave. 



where tons and tons of stone have been broken 
away and fallen into the sea. 

Perhaps far out upon the distant reef, where 
the white caps are still showing, hung help- 
lessly upon the sharp-fanged rocks, heeled over 
on her side with masts and rigging all down, 
is the battered hulk of a schooner that was 
driven in by the wind the night before. The 
little black speck that moves slowly about her 
fore-foot is possibly a boat of a life-saving crew 
that was unable to save during the storm, and 
is now only making a perfunctory examination 
of what remains. Perhaps again the little knot 
of fisherfolk that is seen crowded together far 
down the beach has found at the water's edge, 
half buried in the sand, a cold form with a 
frayed rope shirred about the waist, purplish 
hands with torn finger nails, and a white face 
with wet hair clinging about it as the tide went 
out. Dead, quite dead ! Yes ; but what cares 
the sea! Captain or cabin-boy, prince or pau- 
per, lover or hater, what cares the sea! 

The high-water line along the beach always 
has its tale to tell, its report of accident, its 
whisperings of disaster. Fragments of weed 
and shell, wreckage of ship and sail, blocks, 
planks, spars, bozes, flat corks, strange woods 



-all the flotsam of the wave is there- 



-flung 



THE WIND'S WILL 



139 



together in an odd confusion. And as one wan- 
ders along the sands the eye picks out things 
more personal to humanity — a glove, a wom- 
an's hat, a faded photograph, a wreath of 
orange blossoms, a Japanese book printed on 
rice paper and on the fly-leaf in faded script 
a name, " Therese Marcou." Tales of the sea 
too simple for comment, perhaps. Yes, and 
with them, sometimes, horrors too obvious to 
be mistaken. A few years ago on the New 
Jersey coast the waves washed up a French kid 
boot — a woman's boot buttoned tightly — and 
within it a foot cut off at the top of the 
leather as though by the clean blow of an axe. 
A deed of violence! Yes; but the sea has 
witnessed many of them. To-day a battleship 
goes down and from her a thousand bubbling 
cries rise skyward; yesterday the sea waters 
crept into the heart of Mont Pelee and the over- 
whelming of St. Pierre followed; to-morrow 
perhaps some South Sea island or Indian shore 
will be inundated by a tidal wave and whole 
villages destroyed. But what cares the sea! 
The bright waves continue to travel landward, 
they fling the broken remnants on the shore, 
the very dust of disaster is shaken from the 
surface. The passing of light, of shade, of 
color, of life, are all one to the sea. 



A sea 
horror 



Tragedies 
of the sea. 



CHAPTER VII 



THE WAVE'S TOOTH 



The cliff 
wall. 



Cliffs of granite that stretch up and down 
the coast, capes of rock that here and there 
push their prows out into the ocean, shores of 
shingle and sandstone that forever shoulder the 
broken wave away — what a barrier they form 
against the sea! The mighty wall, with a 
foundation far beneath the tide and an eleva- 
tion far above it, how impossible of conquest 
it seems ! Serene it stands with perpendicular 
face turned seaward as though defiant of the 
elements. The pines and birches grow on its 
top ; below the verge in the crannies of the rock 
cling sumach and alder, interspersed with sam- 
phire, sea pinks, field daisies, goldenrod, or 
perhaps only moss with green and yellow li- 
chens ; from its pinnacles the osprey watches the 
outstretched waters; and along the narrow 
ledges the clamoring sea birds build their 
nests. The sense of security and permanence 
is omnipresent. We are prone to think that 
no wave could ever prevail against that tower- 
140 



THE WAVE'S TOOTH 



141 



ing barrier. It is too strong, too high, too thick 
for sea-born hosts to conquer. 

And yet a hundred feet or more above the 
tide on the face-wall little vegetation grows, 
the unweathered surfaces show where immense 
blocks have recently loosened and fallen away, 
and down at the water's edge the shore is made 
up of great bowlders each weighing perhaps 
many tons. What is the significance of this? 
And why does the cliff, seen in profile, reveal 
a base that recedes and a top that projects out 
over the wave? It is perhaps true that the 
barrier cannot be overcome by any sudden at- 
tack of the waves; no storm however fierce can 
surprise or break down the wall. But is it proof 
against continual assault, day in and day out, 
year in and year out? The blow of the wave 
may be fended off, foiled, thrown back; but 
the daily gnaw of the wave's tooth — what 
granite base can withstand that? 

Not always is the cliff being beaten by great 
seas. If its foundation is sunk in very deep 
water the waves will flood in silently, without 
break or dash of crest. The bottom of the 
wave, meeting with no friction, travels as fast 
as the top; and being, like the base of a tri- 
angle, further forward than the top, it strikes 
the underlying foundation wall first. The re- 



Blocks and 
bowlders 
broken 
away. 



Deep water 
at cliff base. 



142 



THE OPAL SEA 



The shallow 
shore 



Friction of 
wave bases. 



suit is a rebound and a shooting upward of the 
water into the apex of the wave — a dancing 
skyward of harmless jets. Even a heavy storm 
will not always throw waves against a cliff so 
situated. It is the most secure of the rock 
barriers, and centuries may elapse before such a 
wall is finally disintegrated and cast into the sea. 
The cliff with a shallow shore, shelving out- 
ward, fares much worse. The waves as they 
come in from the sea, moving in even succes- 
sion, begin to feel a pull upon their bases as 
soon as the shallowing commences. The drag 
upon each wave retards the onward march 
of the columns, with the result that the for- 
ward waves move more slowly, and the ones 
that come after catch up with them — close 
up the ranks as it were — and make the col- 
umns shorter and nearer together. As each 
wave moves up the shelving shore the friction 
becomes greater. The base is held back by the 
sea bottom and pushed back by the undertow 
running outward from the shore ; while the top, 
being less retarded than the base, is by its own 
impetus driven ahead — pitched violently for- 
ward. The climax is reached when the wave 
dashes itself to pieces against the cliff and falls 
in shattered foam among the shore bowlders. 
Immediately its broken fragments gather them- 



THE WAVES TOOTH 



143 



selves together and there is a recession of waters 
that runs down the shore and helps form the 
base of a new breaker, or else runs under the 
wave and out seaward in the undertow. This 
process of forming, breaking, striking, and re- 
ceding is endlessly repeated; the shore is never 
entirely free from it, the sea is never completely 
at rest. Even under the smooth glittering 
moonlit surface there is always the ground 
swell, the curve and fall on the beach, the wash 
downward of the broken waters. 

The waves, that have been affirmed as sel- 
dom rising fifty feet from trough to crest in 
mid-ocean even in hurricane weather, reach to 
enormous heights when hurled against the 
shore. A heavy storm on a shelving coast will 
fling crests of spray up and over cliffs a hun- 
dred and fifty feet in height with apparently 
little effort. The whole wave does not go so 
high by any means; but the tremendous im- 
petus put in the top by the forward motion 
of the wave, together with the force of the 
wind, hurls the crest far beyond its parent base. 
The usually cited illustration of this is Bell 
Light on the Scottish coast, which, though one 
hundred and fifteen feet above the sea, is often 
hidden in clouds of foam and spray. And, 
again, Eddystone Light from a structure sev- 



Breaicing 
and striking 
of crests. 



Height of 
waves along 
rocky 
coasts. 



144 



THE OPAL SEA 



Impact 
of storm 
waves. 



Destruction 
of islands. 



enty-two feet in height was rebuilt in 1877 to 
an altitude of one hundred and thirty-two feet 
to prevent the waves from riding over the top 
of the lantern. 

The impact of such waves is estimated at 
a maximum of about seventeen tons to the 
square yard. The southern coast of Eng- 
land can be felt to tremble a mile back 
from the shore when a great gale is hurling 
waves against its cliffs; and the direct result 
of this battering and storming is easily com- 
puted. Dover Strait widens a yard or more 
each year, and Shakespeare Cliff has worn away 
nearly a mile in eighteen centuries. Water deep 
enough to float a ship is now running over 
what was once a village on a cliff at Weybourne, 
Suffolk; and what are now the shifting Good- 
win Sands were, before the Norman Conquest, 
the broad acres of Earl Godwin the Saxon. 
The wear is going on to-day with no whit of 
energy abated. The island of Heligoland, with 
its cliffs two hundred feet high, has been bom- 
barded by storm waves for many years and is 
doomed to destruction; and many low islands 
that now lie along our rocky coasts were once 
portions of the coast itself, but were beaten 
down, worn away, and finally cut off from the 
mainland by a flanking movement of the waves. 



THE WAVE'S TOOTH 



145 



The storm wave is, indeed, a powerful batter- 
ing ram. And yet the greatest destruction 
along the coast hardly comes from the swift- 
smiting crest. There is force in the blow, to 
be sure; but in the long account of time it is 
the wear on the cliff bases that finally topples 
the rock forward into the sea. Day and night 
at the foundation walls there is the gnaw of 
the wave's tooth; winter frosts creep into the 
cracks and veins of the upper rock wedging it 
away from the main body ; heavy storms follow 
with their breakers flung high up the wall ; and 
great blocks of granite are loosened, falling with 
a crash to the bottom of the cliff. This is the 
process that destroys. Sometimes it is tem- 
porarily stayed, clogged by its own debris; but 
there is always a clearing away for new action, 
a preparing for a new attack. The sea is never 
idle. 

And yet water in itself has small power to 
cut or eat into rock. Where there is no motion 
there is no wear. Five hundred fathoms down 
the rocks may be honeycombed by gases, but 
they are not disintegrated by friction. It is 
only along the coast that destruction goes rap- 
idly forward. For though sea water has more 
or less grit in it that gives it a rasping edge, 
its real destructive power at the cliff base lies 



Gnaw of the 

wave's 

tooth 



Wear upon 
cliff walls. 



The grit in 
sea water. 



146 



THE OPAL SEA 



Wave mo- 
tion along 
shores. 



Bowlders at 
the cliff 



in the stones and sands it can move, drive be- 
fore it, drag about from point to point, push 
into gravel pens, and whirl around and out and 
along the smooth ledges again. 

This is all helped on by the manner in which 
the incoming waves usually strike the shore. 
It is seldom that they come " head on." More 
often they advance at an angle with a side 
thrust, a diagonal rub, for some length along 
the rock bases. Pebbles, shells, and round 
bowlders are swept along in swift procession, 
or are dropped momentarily into shallow beds 
by the loss of wave motion, only to be caught 
up again by the wave following after. In any 
event the grating process goes on, and in time 
both rock base and battering bowlder are the 
losers. 

When the bowlder blocks first fall into the 
sea at the base of the cliff they perhaps lie there 
for years and, in measure, protect the cliff by 
warding off the waves. Gradually the rough 
edges are worn away so that they are more easily 
rolled. Sea weeds gather about them — weeds 
having bladders like pea pods that hold air and 
buoy up the stones, making them more trans- 
portable. Barnacles and limpets grow in among 
the weeds and make an outer armor that partly 
protects the stones themselves. When a win- 



THE WAVE'S TOOTH 



147 



ter storm comes the waves lift them and drive 
them landward with great force. Countless 
smaller bowlders carrying their modicum of 
fronds that hang down like fringes, are driven 
against them, the sands sweep around and over 
them, sea shells cut them, the shock against the 
cliff walls breaks them. After a time the pro- 
tecting sea weed is torn from them, they grow 
rounder, smaller, and are more easily driven 
with the waves. Finally they are all ground 
down to gravel and sand and flung along the 
beaches in a shower or carried seaward by the 
undertow. 

Not one but millions of bowlder blocks along 
the rocky shores are, year by year, going through 
this process of disintegration. If the block 
happens to be a hard piece of stone it will last 
for a long time, and, while being slowly ground 
to sand, will work destruction to the things that 
grind. With a semi-human instinct it turns its 
flint edge against the softest piece of the op- 
posing rock and works on that first — or at least 
it so appears judging from results. For every- 
where on bowlder and cliff the wear is uneven. 
The wall presents a gnawed appearance, is hol- 
lowed out in spots, scooped in segments and 
half-circles, eaten through at the back, probed 
along seams and ledges, scoured smooth in ba- 



Fate of the 
bowlders. 



Soft parts of 
chff worn 
first. 



148 



THE OPAL SEA 



Spouting 



Rock grot- 
toes. 



sins and pot holes. In addition to stone weap- 
ons every swash of the wave may drive a long 
tongue of water up an open vein in the rock- 
strata of the shore until, after years of churn- 
ing, a hole is worn through at the far end and 
a souffleur or " spouting horn " flings a line of 
white spray high into the sunlight with every 
pulsation of the surf. Once the passage is worn 
through it begins to widen. Eventually it may 
cut off that portion of the shore, and thus by 
isolating it, compass its fall more speedily. 

Beneath the sea at the cliff's base where there 
is the constant pound of bowlders, sometimes a 
smooth circle in the rock is worn. In this circle 
gravel and stones are flung around with a 
swing like pebbles in a glacier pot. And with 
a similar erosive effect. It may take centuries 
of this grinding and working under the water 
to produce a marked effect ; but eventually there 
is a grotto formed, and at low tide the entrance 
is perhaps apparent. In and out through this 
entrance the waves keep dashing, further and 
further the grotto keeps receding as the fissures 
in the rock strata are pried open, deepened, 
widened into galleries. The softer portions of 
the rock crumble away, the harder portions at 
the sides remain intact, the unwashed portions 
at the top make a vaulted roof; and the deep- 



THE WAVE'S TOOTH 



149 



bayed ocean cave is the result. Year after year 
the waters widen the door and broaden the 
cave's boundaries; year after year the wave 
floods in and goes feeling with wet fingers along 
the dark cold walls, touching here, reaching up 
there, and then recedes upon itself only to be 
followed by another wave. 

Often it happens that these ocean caves have 
their entrances far below the water line and are 
never known to man. Little if any light pene- 
trates to them, and only the seal pushes a 
murky head above the surface of the waters or 
flings himself at full length along the dripping 
ledges of slate. Often, again, the entrance is 
only a few feet beneath low tide, and may be 
entered by a swift plunge down and in and up. 
Strange the sight within such a cave, lighted 
as it is from beneath the surface. The swim- 
mer who lifts a white arm out of water or 
clambers up for a moment upon a rocky plat- 
form to rest, is amazed at the blue light that 
dances weirdly up from below, and the bluer 
drops of water that fall from his finger tips. 
The whole basin seems like a liquid sapphire, 
and the stalactites hanging from the ragged 
ceiling gleam like pendants of amethyst. 

It is not probable that the wear of the sea 
alone is responsible for the deep indentations 



Ocean 
caves. 



Within the 
caves. 



Weird 
lights and 
colors. 



150 



THE OPAL SEA 



Fiords. 



Victor 
Hugo's 



of various shores called fiords. They exist only 
along mountainous coasts as in Norway and 
Alaska, and are supposed to be caused by a 
subsidence of the land, which has allowed the 
sea to enter the valleys and creep up the flanks 
of the mountains. But no doubt the water is 
responsible for much modification of the orig- 
inal subsidence. Once the sea gains a grinding 
space it is not easily persuaded to cease work. 
The long fiords that run for many miles back 
into the rock are not stagnant. The tide floods 
them slowly because it has a push up hill; but 
the ebb is more destructive and carries with it 
seaward much loose debris. The tendency is 
always to widen and deepen the runway of the 
water. 

Possibly the best example of the fiord is not 
the smaller indentation that marks the coast of 
Maine and Nova Scotia; but Victor Hugo's 
Lysefiord, which runs inland some twenty miles, 
and yet in places is not more than two thou- 
sand feet in width. Its walls are abrupt, being 
based below the water line a thousand feet and 
rising above the water line over three thousand 
feet. It is apparently a cleft in the rock, so 
narrow that the sunlight never touches parts 
of it, winds rarely reach down to it, and heat 
and cold are comparatively without effect upon 



THE WAVE'S TOOTH 



151 



it. With a roof over all it might pass for an 
ocean cave, formed by widening and deepening 
a rock fissure, were it not for its enormous 
length and depth. 

Time and tide and the wave's tooth, what 
will they not accomplish! The changes they 
have wrought appear on every coast. Working 
along the line of least resistance, working with 
that diagonal thrust, the waves have carved out 
many a rock-bound bay and left projecting into 
the sea many a wedge-shaped promontory. The 
promontory perhaps stands for years, facing 
serenely seaward; but always growing a little 
sharper at its point. Eventually a fissure ap- 
pears back from the point, the water creeps in, 
gnaws through, and separates the point from 
its parent body. In a few years there is a 
core of hard rock, a needle, a pinnacle, a lonely 
tower, standing in the sea. Winds and waves 
carve it into fantastic forms, its inaccessibility 
make it weird and mysterious ; and presently it 
is called by the 'long-shore people the Devil's 
Pulpit or Satan's Nose or The Old Man of the 
Sea. For many years this outlier of the shore 
stands above the tides, growing thinner and 
thinner each year, until perhaps during some 
violent winter storm it falls with a crash into 
the water. Immediately the waves begin clear- 



Bays and 
promotories, 
how made. 



Towers 
along shore. 



152 



THE OPAL SEA 



Reefs and 

sunken 

rocks. 



Sands of 
the shore. 



Bars and 
necks of 
land. 



ing away all trace of the accident. They smooth 
and scour and roll the broken fragments into 
deeper water until nothing but a stump of rock 
is left. Long years afterward the once lofty 
pinnacle appears on the sailing charts as a reef 
or sunken rock; and as you drive by it in a 
catboat you may notice a flattening of the water 
just there and a tangle of green sea weed that 
sways and rolls with each movement of the 
wave. 

But is the sea always the gainer? Is there 
no compensation made to the land? What be- 
comes of the fallen blocks of stone — the disin- 
tegrated cliff? All the sands of the pocket 
beaches, of the bars, and spits, and shallow sea- 
beds make answer. They themselves are but 
the granulated bowlders of the shore. As they 
are ground to sand and gravel the waves scat- 
ter them along the sickle-shaped beaches; or, 
quite as often, the currents lead them out to 
sea and heap them over sunken reefs. Drift 
upon drift they gather until after a long 
time — for the processes of nature are slow — 
they become a bar or neck of land called a 
shoal. At low tide this bar appears above the 
water — a dark, flat strip where shore-birds con- 
gregate and sea weeds cling. Eventually it lifts 
high enough to be above the tide, grows into a 



THE WAVES TOOTH 



153 



low sand barrier, is covered with shore grass, 
and makes a protection for a bay or sound back 
of it. 

Frequently the building of sea barriers is 
helped by the deposit of streams. The rivers 
are continually carrying down immense quan- 
tities of silt and sediment. The bulk of this 
silt is carried only a few miles from shore be- 
fore it begins to settle to the bottom. The 
result is soon apparent in a bar or lido, made 
up of sand and river mud upon which vegeta- 
tion grows and lends stability to the accumu- 
lating soil. With the sea once shut out a la- 
goon is formed reaching landward, and the 
tendency is for this lagoon to grow long grasses, 
gather vegetable and animal life to itself, and 
form small islands. The islands are often 
started by tangled bunches of sea weed, knit 
together by growing grasses, and made into a 
thick mat by various roots and weeds of the 
water. Frequently they are spongy in charac- 
ter and when walked upon bend like thin ice. 
And they may also drift about from place to 
place with the wind, lacking a foundation or 
anchorage. Such an island, some years ago, 
blew into the harbor of Duluth on Lake Su- 
perior during a storm, and was towed out by 
tugs several da}^s later. 



Sea bar- 
riers. 



Lagoons 
and islands. 



154 



THE OPAL SEA 



The 
Venetian 



Marsh 
lands. 



Bars and 
islands lost 
in storms. 



When many of these islands are formed na- 
ture is disposed to unite them by strands and 
bridges of sea weed that thicken, knit and hard- 
en, until finally the whole area turns into a 
marsh covered with reeds and rushes. Venice 
with its river Brenta, its lido, and its lagoons, 
would no doubt have turned to sedge long ago, 
had it not been for the dredging of the canals 
and the rise and fall of the one-foot tide. The 
marsh lands of Albemarle and Pamlico sounds 
were made possible by such rivers as the Eoan- 
oke stretching sand strips parallel with the 
shore ; and along the coasts of Maryland, Texas, 
and Brazil there are millions of acres of marshes 
formed in this same way. Eventually they be- 
come coastal plains and are inhabited by man. 

This is all a winning from the sea by the 
land; and yet it must be admitted that it is 
not always a permanent accession. At times 
the sea rises in its might, overwhelms bars, 
islands, and marshes; and in a single day 
sets at naught the winning of years. Along 
the Louisiana shore in the Gulf of Mexico 
new lands are brought into existence from 
year to year, but others are being destroyed. 
Large islands have disappeared from there 
in recent times leaving only ugly reefs be- 
hind. Tree stumps that once formed part 



THE WAVE'S TOOTH 



155 



of the great swamp forests of Louisiana are 
now found beneath the Gulf waters; and the 
cypresses of Point Chicot, far out at sea, stand 
like spectres in the midst of a watery plain. 
Then, too, bayous have been ripped open by 
great waves; and new channels have been cut 
here and there by the tides. Creole Pass, six 
hundred feet wide to-day, was not on the chart 
twenty-five years ago. It was born in a storm. 
At the same time perhaps a group of islands, 
a marsh or a belt of swamp, passed out — dis- 
appeared. 

Give and take is the story of the shore. The 
tides creep in bays and harbors doing little 
damage, but they suck out down long inclines 
dragging with them sand and mud ; on the con- 
trary, the storm waves ride in with wear and 
wash but go out in broken undertow. The rock 
grinds down to sand and that is loss; but the 
sand comes back eventually to the dunes and 
that is gain. The return of the sands is made 
possible by the storm waves that rake and drag 
the shallow sea bottoms for many miles off 
shore. In the rush of water across the spits 
and the bars, the sands are caught up very much 
as light snow by winter winds, are hurried 
coastward, and flung in long beds and banks on 
the beaches. Layer upon layer they are heaped 



The Louis- 
iana coast. 



Give and 
take of land 
and sea. 



Return of 
the sands 
from the 
sea. 



156 



THE OPAL SEA 



Drift of 



Sand dunes. 



on the shore, above the tide line, over the 
shells, over the kelp, over the vanishing wrecks 
of ships. 

In a few days perhaps these tons and tons 
of newly-arrived sands have dried out in the 
sun, and when the cool sea breezes blow inland 
to take the place of the vacuum left by the 
rising heated air of the coast, the sands begin 
to move. Backward from the sea they drive and 
drift; but they do not go far before meeting 
with obstructions. It may be only a piece of 
timber or a clump of bushes ; but in either case 
when once a pause is made, once an obstacle 
bars the way, the sand bank begins to grow like 
the snow bank. The sand drifts up and over, 
dropping at the back, so that there is a con- 
tinual accumulation in the rear; while grasses 
seem to spring up and pin down what is already 
gathered. And so perhaps, after many years, 
there is a row of sand hills or dunes stretch- 
ing along the beach, thinly covered with a 
long, wiry grass that holds them in shape like 
a net. 

The dunes are barriers against the sea and 
very effective ones at that. As sand they are 
more indestructible than they ever were as rock. 
The hard surviving kernels of the stone they 
are usually of uniform size and pack together 



THE WAVES TOOTH 



157 



like ball-snow, making a flat, smooth face that 
the water does not readily fracture. The blow 
of the wave falling on the beach presses the 
sands more tightly together, but does not neces- 
sarily disintegrate them; the swash of the 
breaker at the foot of the dunes rolls the sur- 
face sands about and sometimes carries them 
away, but not so fast as they accumulate. The 
tendency is to move the dunes landward and 
the beaches seaward. Thus nature thinks to 
make up for the loss of the cliff by extending 
the gain of the shore. With things inanimate, 
as well as with living species, there is an appar- 
ent attempt to maintain the status quo. Change 
is continuous, unceasing; but the law of com- 
pensation sees to it that there is no final loss. 
Sea and land seem continually at warfare, but 
the result is merely an exchange of possessions. 
For the dunes are by no means invulnerable 
to the sea. Pieced out by human aid in build- 
ing connecting dykes across inlets they last per- 
haps for decades, protecting such a back-coun- 
try as Holland, and allowing towns and villages 
with surrounding farm lands to exist below the 
level of the sea; but when violent storms come 
dykes and dunes sometimes go down before the 
waves, and great destruction follows. The 
Zuider Zee was thus made from a shallow lake 



Dunes as 

sea 

barriers. 



Maintain- 
ing the 
status quo. 



Dykes of 
Holland. 



158 



THE OPAL SEA 



Inundations 
from the 
North Sea. 



Travel of 
the sand 
dunes. 



Destruction, 
of villages 
by sand. 



into an arm of the North Sea. Inundations 
along the Dutch coast have been frequent — at 
one time destroying a hundred thousand lives, 
at another submerging seventy-two villages. 
And always creating new water ways. It was not 
until the sixteenth century that the dykes were 
so firmly constructed that the sea was finally 
barred out from the northern Netherlands. 

Nor are the dunes always stationary, even 
where free from the worry of the waves. The 
sands are uneasy and keep traveling with the 
wind, as the wind blows. Given a current of 
air and a free passage-way, and they im- 
mediately go winding like a golden snake, 
pouring themselves upon some newly-formed 
mound, which presently lifts into a dune. 
Where the coast is very bare, quite unprotected 
by heavy grasses, as along the Cape Cod por- 
tion of the Massachusetts shore, the dunes are 
continually blowing away — changing like a ka- 
leidoscope into something new and strange every 
few months. And in some places they have 
proved as destructive to property as the waves. 
Lege, a village near Bordeaux, has had its 
church moved and rebuilt three times in mod- 
ern days; and much of the village has been 
destroyed by the inundating sands. Other vil- 
lages along the coast have had similar experi- 



THE WAVE'S TOOTH 



159 



ences. In open untimbered places the drift has 
been almost inconceivable. There are sand 
hills on the Chihuahua desert that have become 
mountains in height, yet are continually drift- 
ing to leeward with the wind. And that the 
vast sands of Sahara were originally blown in- 
ward from the western sea shore is not such 
a wild conjecture. All things are possible in 
the realm of nature. 

But whatever compensation there may be in 
sand piled along beach and dune and desert, 
however this may atone for the loss of the cliffs, 
it does not stay the destruction. That constant 
fret at the edge of land and sea goes on for- 
ever. Century after century running into un- 
known ages there have been the rub of the wave, 
the grind of sand and gravel, the pound of 
surge, and the swish of high-flung spray. Beau- 
tiful is the sea in all its movements, never more 
beautiful than when tossing and turning at the 
foot of the cliff; but in the end the moving 
glittering sand proves diamond-edged; and the 
smooth wave, so like a tiger's paw in its velvety 
touch, shows the sharp claw beneath. A lover 
moaning at the feet of the Earth — such was 
the Sea in ancient fable. Yes; but his kisses 
have worn her away, and his love is the passion 
that consumes and destroys. 



Sands of 
Sahara. 



The sea at 
foot of the 
cliff. 



The tiger's 
paw and the 
lover's kiss. 



CHAPTEE VIII 



SOUNDING SHORES 



Footprints 
of the sea. 



Dover Cliff. 



Sandwich 
beach. 



Along the shore where the restless pacing of 
waves never ceases, only there are the foot- 
prints of the sea. The crescent beaches, the 
jagged coasts of honeycombed slate, the defiles 
cut through granite, the channel ways leading 
into lagoons and harbors — these are the blazed 
trails of the waves. Destruction follows along 
them; and yet, as we have seen, the sea some- 
times builds up as well as pulls down. Since 
Eoman days she has harried and worn Dover 
Cliff, scattering its sands far and wide ; but dur- 
ing the intervening years, from other sources, 
she has built up Sandwich beach and turned its 
one-time harbor into dunes and meadows. 

The sea began to slip away from the old 
Cinque port many centuries ago. When the 
east wind blew across the North Sea, and the 
waves rolled over Goodwin Sands, perhaps parts 
of that shifting bed were carried inland and 
heaped upon the Kentish beach ; when the west 
wind blew perhaps it dried the sands and then 
banked them into dunes that step by step fought 
160 



SOUNDING SHORES 



161 



their way seaward. However it was, the land 
gained on the sea, the old town with its Nor- 
man church, its walls of flint and crumbled 
moat, was deserted by its ally; and to-day it 
stands two miles inland — a town without a har- 
bor, a port without ships. Small craft still 
creep along the muddy Stour and anchor at the 
Fishers' Gate, but not since Plantagenet days 
have the waves paced up and down by the an- 
cient walls. 

From the village going down to the beach 
one crosses meadows that look now as perhaps 
did Goodwin Sands in the days of the Saxon. 
After a mile or more across these flat lands the 
dunes appear. They are tumbled-and-tossed 
dunes that drift little to-day because held firm 
by beach grasses ; but in form they roll and dip 
and hollow like a cross-cut sea, and seem to 
have been formed in some convulsion of the 
coast. The convulsion, however, never took 
place. The formation is due solely to the winds 
that seem forever whirling and twisting along 
this coast. It was possibly the very irregularity 
of these dunes and their abundance of "haz- 
ards " that led the St. George's Club to occupy 
them as a golf course. It is known to-day 
as the " champion course," and is often spoken 
of as " the links by the sea." 



The old 
town of 
Sandwich. 



Across the 
meadows. 



The St. 
George's 
golf course. 



162 



THE OPAL SEA 



Gray 
waters. 



A wreck on 

Goodwin 

Sands. 



Far down at the foot of the dunes are the 
waves. When the tide is at flood the golfer, if 
he will, may look out upon the gray water where 
dingy sails of ships melt into thick misty air, 
where Channel fishing-boats bob up and down 
in the choppy waves, and where coal-burning 
steamers, coming up Dover way with the wind, 
are smothered in their own smoke — dirty black- 
hulled steamers that wallow and stagger through 
the gray-yellow water as though top heavy. It is 
a wonderful sea, at times a terrible sea, a sea 
that has been often strewn with wrecks and is 
ever dreaded by the sailor. To-day perhaps it is 
tranquil enough but to-morrow it may be dash- 
ing high over Goodwin Sands, threatening the 
shipping in the Downs; and foaming up the 
dunes with caps of spray that leap and ride 
upon the winds like Valkyries. Not the depth 
of the water but its shallowness makes it dan- 
gerous. A ship driven in by a gale strikes 
upon the Sands, is lifted and pounded by the 
come-and-go of each wave, is strained and 
wrenched from stem to rudder post; until at 
last with opened seams and broken back she 
rolls a helpless wreck. Backward and forward 
she tosses as the waves come and go — waves that 
are all fury and swing over the hulk with a sav- 
age swish, tearing at blocks and sheets and 



SOUNDING SHOKES 



163 



shrouds, twisting planks and bulwarks and 
stanchions. Up into the rigging the white 
crests reach, striking and wrenching at the 
sailors clinging there, until one by one, ex- 
hausted by cold and bewildered with spray, 
the men are shaken loose and drop into the 
seething foam. It is an old old story along 
this coast. Everyone between Margate and 
Dover has the same tale to tell. 

When the tide is at ebb the dunes are nearly 
a mile from the sea. A great stretch of wet, 
glittering sand, flat as a floor, reaches down to 
the water's edge. Here and there are shallow 
pools where shore birds wade and the images 
of shrimpers and bait-diggers, seen in reflec- 
tion, look stilted and uncanny as though elon- 
gated by mirage. A long line of black kelp 
stretches where the last high tide washed, shells 
and blue flints are scattered everywhere, ribs 
of wrecked schooners push up like fire-eaten 
stumps from the sand. As you move down 
toward the water the footing grows less secure, 
the sands become muddier, more grimy, black- 
ish, a half submerged flat spreads out; and at 
an indefinable edge there is the break of the 
wave — a greenish-gray wave with a foam upon 
it like yellow cream. 

It is not a lovable shore. There is nothing 



An old, old 
story. 



The stretch 
of wet 
beach. 



The half 

subrr, 

flat. 



164 



THE OPAL SEA 



A gray 
harmony 
along shore. 



Somber col- 
oring of 
North Sea. 



The Scottish 
coast. 



gentle or charming or winning about it. But 
the reach of it commands respect. And, too, 
the elements of land, sea, and sky are here re- 
duced to their simplest terms. Color is a half- 
tone made up of green and yellow, quite abso- 
lute in its harmony; the air is a thick veiling 
which unites everything; the light is muffled, 
strained through clouds, grayed by moisture. 
Mist and cloud mingle with the smoke of com- 
merce to complete the picturesque if sad mono- 
tone. 

Yet the leaden skies that so often hang over 
these English waters are depressing; and, for 
all the strength of their somber coloring the 
coasts are a bit mournful. The North Sea in no 
part of it shows nature in her most entrancing 
moods. Up under the rocky edge of Suther- 
land, the skies are clearer but the water little 
brighter. It is usually steel-blue like that of 
the Black Sea. The old red sandstone turns 
dark at the water's edge, the beaches have gray 
lusterless sands packed in about the blackened 
stumps of rocks, and the sea weed is blackish, 
too. And almost always an uneasy water — 
choppy waves, waves that are forever slapping 
the cliff walls, or else eddying currents that go 
gurgling through rock fissures and whirl about 
sunken reefs. At night the rocky coast becomes 



SOUNDING SHORES 



165 



dark, forbidding, sepulchral with the sound of 
the sea. 

"The nightmared ocean murmurs and yearns 
Welters and swashes and tosses and turns 
And the dreary black sea weed lolls and wags; 
Only a moan through the black clefts blown 
With sobs in the rifts where the coarse kelp shifts, 
Falling and lifting, tossing and drifting, 
And under all a deep dull roar 
Dying and swelling forever more ." 

It is all so very different along the tropic 
shores of the Pacific or the Atlantic, where fog 
and mist are seldom seen and cold is never 
known, where commerce has not defiled the 
waters nor manufactures blackened the blue fir- 
mament. On the coasts of Central America — 
to go no further seaward — there are miles and 
miles of beaches that have no name nor history 
and have been trodden only by Indian feet. 
Wonderful beaches they are, dazzling in light 
and color ! All the glitter of the shore is theirs 
— sands of quartz and coral flashing in their 
whiteness, sands of peroxide of iron and flakes 
of mica, mosaic sands with strata of carnelian, 
obsidian, and agate. And here, too, is the shat- 
tered and outworn life of the sea, shells of 
pearl in countless numbers, ribbons and fronds 



Central 

American 

beaches. 



The glitter 
and litter 
of the shore. 



166 



THE OPAL SEA 



Singing 
sands. 



The cres- 
cent beach. 



and Gulf weed from reef and shallow, jelly 
fish, star fish, sea-porcupine, sea-turtle — all the 
flora and fauna of the Gulf and beyond. But 
seldom a relic or a trace of humanity. No 
wreck, no broken boat, no message in a bottle 
finds its way here. Nature still holds a sway 
as undisputed as when the Spanish conquerors 
came. The terraced beach is perfect in its 
sweep, the sands as they crunch under the foot 
seem musical; and the blue waves that ride in 
with snowy crests break on the white shores 
with a sound like distant cathedral bells at 
evening. 

Of all the beaches, in the tropics or elsewhere, 
perhaps the sickle-shaped or crescent beach 
is the most graceful in form. Especially is 
this true when the curve of the shore is em- 
phasized by contrasting cliffs or rocky head- 
lands near at hand. The abrupt perpendicular 
line seems necessary to bring out the winding 
horizontal line. And yet graceful as is this 
winding curving beach, it is perhaps not so 
impressive, not so strong, as the broader sim- 
pler shores. Along every coast, sometimes for 
hundreds of miles, are straight-away stretches 
where sea and shore seem to parallel each other 
in long vanishing lines that are nothing less 
than sublime in their reach. More often, how- 



SOUNDING SHOKES 



167 



ever, the beach has its marked irregularities 
such as sand spits thrust seaward, bays inter- 
sected, inlets cut through, depressions, eleva- 
tions, steps, platforms, terraces, runways. The 
wind will carve a thousand fantastic shapes 
from banks of sand ; the wearing waves will do 
no less for the beaches. 

The fineness or coarseness of the shore sands 
is usually dependent upon the nearness of the 
cliffs. The closer to the rocks, the coarser will 
be the stone and gravel. The shorter quarter- 
circle beaches are usually found in between the 
gaps of a rocky coast, and mingled with their 
sands will be found all sorts of pebbles — flints, 
agates, granites, porphyries. Here also will be 
found the shells of molluscs, the spiney casings 
of sea urchins, sprays of coral, claw of crab, 
tooth of shark, and conch of stromb. Winding 
ribbons of the deep, frail in form and color, are 
interwoven with long sea grasses; and caught 
in the meshes of these are pink star fish, gas- 
tropods lying lifeless in their gay-hued houses, 
and Portuguese men-of-war with iridescent 
float collapsed and tentacles frayed and torn. 
Both the flora and the fauna of the sea pre- 
fer the coarser beaches because they afford 
better feeding grounds, and at the same time 
greater protection. There is shelter to be had 



The irregu- 
lar shore. 



Beaches of 
stone and 
gravel. 



Strewn on 
the sands. 



168 



THE OPAL SEA 



Shell 

beaches. 



White 

sands. 



about the rocks and within the pot holes and 
gravel pens, not only from the assaults of the 
wave but from the common enemy. 

The beaches far removed from cliffs or rocky 
outcroppings are always made up of the finer 
sands, and are studded with shells of the fora- 
minifera and polycystina. These smaller shells 
are not usually seen, except under the micro- 
scope, and a shore made up of them looks like 
an ordinary stretch of white sand. Yet they are 
far from white. Many of them have gaily- 
stained lips, others are roofed with shells of 
pink, rose, blue, and yellow ; and all of them are 
surprising in their spirals and patterns. The 
beaches are heaped with these minute shells, 
and mingled with them are flashing crystals, 
black dots of magnetic iron, gray needles of 
flint, crushed fragments of mother-of-pearl. 
Taken together and perhaps by virtue of their 
varied colors, they form a beach of white sand 
which we tread under foot without a thought — 
a mosaic beach constructed of millions of tiny 
patterns which the water is always keeping 
clean and the sunlight is ever flashing into 
beauty. 

The waves as they rise and break upon such 
a beach seem all crystalline clearness. During 
a storm, when they come in with sufficient force 



SOUNDING SHORES 



169 



to stir the bottom muds, they may be clouded, 
sand-colored, yellowish; but the summer wave 
that breaks easily, runs up the beach in a flat 
push of water, and then sucks back under the 
foot of the new-coming wave, causes no dis- 
coloration of importance. The most graceful 
and the most perfect form of the breaker is 
shown when the water strikes the beach not 
at an angle but broadside. With such a wave 
the crest is not continuous across the whole 
breadth. On the contrary, there is a tendency 
in the crest to concentrate at the highest point, 
and the white lip of foam that rushes forward 
and down usually comes from a well-defined 
center. Nor is it often that a great lone wave 
comes in and breaks on the beach with a crash. 
The beach combers are generally very regular, 
of short length, and they break very much as 
white caps in mid-ocean, only more violently. 

It is quite useless, however, to attempt a rule 
about breaking waves for they are far too vari- 
able. The wind determines the size, form, di- 
rection, and velocity; and the water but obeys 
the drive of the wind. Where the waves strike 
the beach diagonally there is a longer and ap- 
parently a more continuous breaking of the 
crest for some distance down the beach; and 
frequently, when the wind is blowing almost 



Waves on 
the beach. 



Beach 
combers. 



Forms of 

breaking 

waves. 



170 



THE OPAL SEA 



Grace of 
water again. 



Wave parallel with the shore, the waves will curl and 

'"'"""'■■■ fall at their shore end like a furrow cast by a 
plow. Such beach combers will travel along the 
sands, sometimes for many miles, each white 
furrow having its successor marching at its 
heels and breaking along the shore in snowy 
sequence. 

Very beautiful is the breaking wave ! Water 
forms are always beautiful because of their elas- 
ticity, their pliability, their perfect abandon in 
movement. The reckless, careless, surging wave 
seems to have about it the grace of the unpre- 
meditated. It is rhythmical and harmonious 
and yet, apparently, unrestrained by law or pat- 
tern. Each one that comes hurrying in from 
Newfoundland banks or African shore seems 
freighted with a message and falls breathless 
in its telling. It rises, curves, and curls, and 
as it bends downward a long bar of silver light 
flashes along its top. At this moment — the 
moment before the fall — the wave throws off its 
most beautiful light and color. The crest is 
bluish-white like a shadow cast upon snow, 
below it the thin transparent wedge of water 
shows a rare blue-green; and still lower the 
wave base shades into a darker blue. Color, 
light, sky reflection, and foaming crest are all 
mixed for a moment in a symphony of blue and 



Color of 
the wave. 



SOUNDING SHORES 



171 



white. Then with a hollow cataract roar the 
vision disappears in the shattered fragments 
that surge up the beach. 

Quite as beautiful as the crested water that 
buckles and swells to its fall is the fallen wa- 
ter that, driven forward by its own impetus, 
finally spreads into round thin mirrors on the 
sands. It flattens and rolls into the most de- 
lightful rococo curves as the beaded edging 
widens here, narrows there, and yet holds its 
unity everywhere. What a mirror of Aphro- 
dite it is, so clear, so limpid, so perfect in 
its glassy surface! Every marine painter has 
painted it, every poet has used it in metaphor 
or simile, every dreamer by the shore has 
watched it form and gleam and pass away; 
and yet it never palls, never wearies. The pale 
skies of morning, the rosy skies of evening, the 
blue canopy, the bright cloud are reflected 
there; and by day or by night the sun, moon, 
and all the starry heavens are seen upon its 
surface. That watery shield flung flat upon 
the beach but to perish, how illustrative it is 
of nature's prodigality of beauty ! 

Alas ! that the shining mirror is so quickly 
shattered. Each one is no sooner brought to 
perfection than it wavers, trembles, and then 
begins a precipitate retreat down the beach. 



Water mir- 
rors on the 
beach. 



The reflec- 
tion of the 
water 
shield. 



Retreat of 
the water 



172 



THE OPAL SEA 



Wave 

traceries in 
the sand. 



Shore line 
in minia- 
ture. 



Coloring of 
the shore. 



Down, down it rushes, dragging with it sand, 
shells, and pebbles ; and gathering its forces to- 
gether disappears under the base of the new 
wave that is forming. Nothing is left of it 
but a ring of froth and the lines in the sand 
made by the retreating water. Very beautiful 
again are these lines — these wave traceries left 
for a few seconds on the beach. A glimpse of 
them between the come and go of the waters 
may reveal a whole shore line in miniature, 
with bays, creeks, cliffs, and beaches all in place. 
Higher up on the beach where the waves have 
worn deeper perhaps, there may be steps sur- 
rounding a half-circle suggestive of a Koman 
arena, or rolls of sand with valleys in between 
in very form of the waves themselves, or little 
fiords cut back into the dunes with steep banks 
or basins where the salt water stands in pools 
and sea weeds grow, and the drip of iron stain 
from near-by rocks colors the pool a bright 
orange. 

These mirrors that come and go, the wet 
sands, the still ponds that lie in beach pockets, 
the pools that gather under the stern of some 
half-buried wreck or rest in some catch-basin 
of the rocks, play with the sea itself an im- 
portant part in the coloring of the shore. They 
are all reflectors of light; and light, falling as 



SOUNDING SHORES 



173 



Light 
effects and 
shore re- 
flections. 



it does through a heavy sea air, is strained and 
changed in the straining process, as we have 
already noted. At times when it is cold the 
air is tinged bluish-purple, and everything 
along the shore takes on a tint in correspond- 
ence therewith. The waves have a violet hue 
about them, the sands turn lilac, the rocks grow 
pallid with bluish shadows. At other times, 
especially at sunset when the sky overhead is 
flaming with crimson and scarlet, a reddish 
tone will spread along the beach, warming the 
dark cliff-rocks into a strange glow of life, and 
changing the white dunes into hills of red por- 
phyry. With the sky overcast and the light 
falling through filmy clouds the effect is lost 
in gray, gray shore and cliff and sea ; and when 
a thin fog is lifting and the sun looks like a 
shining silver plate, the effect is milky white, 
blue-white as though seen through opal glass. 
The shore is very susceptible to influences of 
light; and any color — dull green, gas-blue, pale 
yellow, pure pink — may chance to dominate the 
scene. 

And what of the golden coloring of moonlight 
that gilds the pinnacles of the cliffs, flashes 
from the wet sands, and glitters along the tops 
of the falling breakers ! Vastly impressive 
when the tide is at its ebb is this moonlight 



Moonlight 
along the 
shore. 



174 



THE OPAL SEA 



Nocturnes. 



Sound of 
the sea on 
the beach. 



along the shore. Miles away down the exposed 
strand it reaches, and even beyond the lift of 
wreck and reef and island, it gleams on distant 
bays, on dripping slates and foam-washed 
beaches. And the dark mysterious shadows 
that everywhere creep in to offset the gilded 
high lights are quite as fascinating. There is 
no more beautiful play of gold upon blue-black 
than the sea under moonlight; and no theme 
has so baffled the landscape painter as this 
subtle " nocturne " by the shore. 

And yet quite as impressive in its way as 
light and color, even more moving emotionally, 
is the sound of the sea on the beach. The liq- 
uid murmur of pouring water, the clink and 
tinkle of sands and shells, the deep undertone 
of the breakers make up a bar of music that 
cannot be set to words; and yet as it runs on, 
repeating the same sad note, how real it be- 
comes ! Was there ever such another dirge 
chanted by the elements ! 

"Listen! you hear the grating roar 
Of pebbles which the waves draw back and fling, 
At their return, up the high strand 
Begin and cease, and then again begin 
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
The eternal note of sadness in?" 

What a note it is ! The restless one who turns 



SOUNDING SHOKES 



175 



uneasily upon the pillow, and looks to the 
window to see the coming light, hears, even 
in the early morning hours, a shock upon the 
air, the roar of wide-spread London town; but 
indicative as it is of human want and misery, 
pathetic as it may be in its tale of unceasing 
labor, it has not half the sadness in it of the 
sounding shore. The pine needles overhead 
sing in the wind, and there are voices in the 
stirred leaves of the forest akin to those of 
the sea; but they are not quite the same. The 
great shut-in valleys of the Andes and the si- 
lent sweeps of Sahara with their hum of dis- 
tance seem to suggest the roar of the ocean, as 
the sea shell which the child holds to its ear; 
but again it is only a suggestion. The sound 
of the surf has its own inimitable sadness. 

Solemn and deep the recurrent beat of the 
sea ; and what is there in it that makes us think 
of Northern shores and Viking days? We 
somehow never associate the heavy surge with 
the southern seas, the coral reefs, or the shell- 
strewn beaches. It has a hollow roar that 
speaks of caves, fiords, maelstroms, rough seas, 
bleak coasts, great storms. Unconsciously we 
conjure up images of Norsemen in their 
strange-prowed boats, of Icelandic heroes, of 
Tristans and Iseults, of Balders and Brun- 



The roar of 
London. 



Other 

sounds 

nature. 



Recurrent 
beating of 
the sea. 



176 



THE OPAL SEA 



Suggestion 
of the 
sound. 



Science and 
sentiment. 



Why are 
not both of 
them true? 



hildes; and the passing away of the gods from 
the shores of the earth and the face of the 
waters. Solemn and deep the sound of the sea 
like the drums in Siegfried's Death March, tell- 
ing of a glory that has ended, of an age and a 
race that are no more. 

Fancy ! pure fancy ! The sea tells no tales. 
Science can explain the cause of the sound and 
analyze its notes to a nicety; and psychology 
can tell us just why and how our minds make 
a mountain out of the mole hill. Yes ; but the 
romance is none the less real for that. It is 
only a clashing of water on the beach, if you 
please, but to those who have imagination and 
feeling it may be freighted with many mean- 
ings. The glamour of the world, the storm of 
passion, the stress of living, the peace of pass- 
ing — songs of the soul, choral hymns, and fu- 
neral dirges — all are there. Like the strung 
strings of a harp each one of us may vibrate 
to a different note, but somewhere in the sym- 
phony of the sea there is the note that strikes 
its responsive chord in each. Science may be 
true — indisputably so— but it does not follow 
therefrom that sentiment is false. 



CHAPTER IX 



GARDENS OF THE SEA 



The flowers of the sea are flowers more in 
appearance than in reality. Seen in masses 
through the clear water they look like beds of 
mountain pinks or fields of ferns or hill sides 
of wild asters, with moss and ice plant and 
cactus growths scattered between; but the like- 
ness is superficial. The plants are very differ- 
ent from those known on the earth. They have 
no root, they absorb nothing from the soil, they 
require neither rain nor air, and some of them 
manage to exist with little or no light. There 
are no blossoming forms, no leaves, seldom 
any fruit; and while there are growths having 
a foothold on the bottom that rise up through 
a thousand feet of water to float ball-shaped 
tangles upon the surface, yet in form they are 
not at all like trees. The " trunk " that climbs 
upward so many feet is no larger than one's 
finger and the bunch of weed at the surface 
that makes a sleeping place for the sea otter 
177 



Plant life 
of the sea. 



Different 
growths 
from those 
of the land. 



178 



THE OPAL SEA 



Conditions 
of growth. 



Place of 
growth. 



has nothing like the foliage of the maple or 
the blossom of the horse chestnut. 

Indeed, the wonder is not that such odd 
plants grow in the sea, but that there should be 
plants there of any kind. The salts and other 
minerals of the water would seem sufficient in 
themselves to destroy, but they are not ; absence 
of light and air would seem to be blighting, but 
it is not. The endeavor is not stifled. Nature 
with her marvellous resources adapts the plant 
to its habitat and, out of what might be thought 
desperate conditions, produces forms of useful- 
ness and beauty. The growths are given claws 
like a bird's foot wherewith they cling to the 
rock; they have no branches but in their place 
long stems and fronds through which they ab- 
sorb floating particles in the water; and they 
perpetuate their kind by budding, by division, 
by fertilization. In the economy of nature 
even the cold grottoes of the shore, and the 
bleak, muffled ledges of the deep shall not 
lie fallow, but bring forth increase that the 
species shall not die out and that no corner of 
the sea shall lack its garb of beauty. 

The wealth of nature's resources, her suffi- 
ciency unto each and every crisis, never seem to 
fail. And how she moulds her children to their 
varied dwelling places and fits them for their 



GARDENS OF THE SEA 



179 



special struggle ! How long would the stiff 
growths of the earth withstand the wrench of 
the wave and the ceaseless pelting of sand and 
gravel along the beaches ? Nature does not at- 
tempt their kind in the sea. There is nothing 
brittle about the weeds that live in the shallow 
waters along shore. Their long stems bend and 
stretch like rubber, and their rounded fronds 
and thongs are tough as leather. Add to this a 
glossy, slippery surface that offers little friction 
to the water, with air bladders or pods that 
keep the plant from being torn or dragged 
upon the bottom, and you have a growth that 
rolls and sways in a heavy sea and comes to 
no more harm than the bending grass on the 
prairies. 

And out of perfect adaptation to use comes 
beauty. What sinuous lines, what marvellous 
curves, the waves beat into these sea weeds ! 
The ribbons and streamers and tresses swing 
and toss in the sea until the very grace of the 
wave itself is theirs. The forms of Chorda, of 
Lessonia, of Macrocystis are more pliable than 
whip cord, more willowy than willow, more 
wavy than the streaming hair of Masnads or 
sea sirens. The commoner forms of wrack, of 
kelp, of tangle (Laminaria digitata), of what, 
for lack of a better name, is called " rock 



Peculiar 
adaptation. 



Strength 
and fitness 
of sea weeds. 



Grace of sea 



180 



THE OPAL SEA 



Swaying 
rock weeds. 



Patterned 
forms in 
deep still 
waters. 



Algce of the 

greater 

depths. 



weed " when rolled and heaped on the beach 
may not appear attractive; but in their ocean 
home, seen through a blue lens of water, they 
sway with each come and go of the wave with 
a grace quite wonderful and quite unparalleled. 
Even that wandering waif of the sea, the Gulf 
weed (Sargassum), drifting in the great At- 
lantic current, has a bend and a reel about it, 
as it slips down the back of a wave, that is 
almost as graceful as the flight of the petrel 
following after it. 

And what of those plants far down in the 
sea gardens that never feel the push of waves, 
those plants that never move or are moved from 
age to age? Are they perhaps modeled upon 
the same pattern as their cousins near the 
shore ? By no means. In the depths where no 
storm or wave ruffles the eternal serenity na- 
ture is free to expand; and there she grows 
plants of symmetrical designs with no fear of 
their accidental destruction. Wonderful forms 
she models — crimson weeds with plumey 
fronds, purple dulses with lace-like patterns, 
iridescent mosses with antlered branches. 
Countless algce, wing-shaped, threaded with 
lines, cupped and domed, starred and crossed 
and circled, are there. 



GAKDENS OF THE SEA 



181 



"In the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of 
Nereus 
Coral and sea fan and tangle, the blooms and the 

palms of the ocean, 
Stand in meadows and forests unchanging, unfading 
from decade to decade.'' 

For thousands upon thousands of miles un- 
der the surface, along every island and conti- 
nent, stretch these wondrous growths of the 
sea. They were not made for us, they flourish 
where human eyes never see them, and many 
of them shrink when human hands touch them ; 
but neither their life nor their beauty is in 
vain. Form and color were not east in sensu- 
ous moulds especially to gratify the aesthetic 
taste of the human. They are, indeed, merely 
the outer manifestation of completeness, of fit- 
ness to an end; and it may be that plants were 
garbed with beauty to please a sub-conscious 
feeling of their own. We deny it. But it may 
be true, nevertheless. 

Not everywhere in the sea do these gardens 
grow. It is assumed (perhaps erroneously) 
that the great depths are barren and that plant 
life goes out with the light of the sun. Certain 
it is that the bulk of the sea weeds — several 
thousand species — grow along shore in fifteen 
or twenty fathoms of water where the tempera- 



Extent of 
the sea 
gardens. 



Feeling 
in plants. 



Growths 
along shore. 



182 



THE OPAL SEA 



A popular 
classifica- 
tion of sea 



Green alga. 



Blooms and 
net weeds 



ture is higher than in the depths, and the yel- 
low sunlight penetrates to the bottom. As the 
shore shelves off into the sea the growths be- 
come smaller and smaller, finally disappearing 
entirely, so far as we know. In a very general 
way the descent seaward is marked by the color 
of the sea weeds ; and a popular classification of 
them by color may be made, though it lacks 
scientific accuracy. 

Along the shore, often in tide pools, rock 
basins and marsh inlets are the numerous 
groups and families of the class Chlorophycece 
or green algce. The color comes from the pres- 
ence of chlorophyll in the cells, and the forms 
are small and complicated. The bright-green 
sea lettuce (Ulva), the iridescent white-banded 
Peacock's Tail (Padina pavonia), the fan- 
shaped cladophora (Cladopliora arcta), the 
green laver (Porphyra vulgaris), the sea bottle 
(Vdlonia ventricosa), with many moss-like, 
netted, filamental, hairy, spiny, cactus-formed 
plants, belong to this class. They are growths 
that need sunlight and are not usually found 
in deep water. 

Still another class of sea plants, Cyanophy- 
cece, need warm sunlight and grow near the sur- 
face. In fact many of them grow on the top 
of the water and are known to us as water 



GARDENS OF THE SEA 



183 



blooms, scums and net weeds. The color is 
blue-green from the presence of phycocyan, but 
this is subject to some marked exceptions. The 
name of the Eed Sea was given because of the 
presence upon the surface of a red species of 
this class; and there are other red species that 
appear in the tropic seas. Blue-green is, how- 
ever, the predominant hue of the Cyanopliy- 
cece. Many varieties of it that grow in salt 
water remain quite unnoticed by us because of 
their diminutive size. Some of them even re- 
quire a microscope for recognition. 

In deeper water yet still along the beaches, 
clinging to cliff rocks and growing in stony 
shallows, are the brown algce that belong to the 
class PliceophycecB. There are many orders in 
this group and some of the forms are the 
largest of the sea weeds. The giant kelp or 
"Devil's Apron" several hundred feet in 
length, the Macrocystis of the Pacific with its 
thousand feet of stem, the bulky Lessonia, the 
sea palm, and the sea-otter's cabbage belong to 
it ; and in a different division are the wrack that 
shows on the rocks at low tide, the Gulf weed 
that gathers in the Sargasso Sea and makes 
breeding places for pelagic or deep-sea fishes, 
and many small and complex forms of rock 
weed. A large number of this group live in the 



Blue-green 
algce. 



Brown 
algce. 



Kelp and 
rock weed. 



184 



THE OPAL SEA 



Red algcB. 



Dulses and 
sea mosses. 



cold waters bordering upon the arctic regions, 
though some of them are found in the tropics. 

Further out in the ocean and deeper down 
than any others, clinging to rocks, banks, shells, 
wrecks, even other plants, are the red algce be- 
longing to the class Bhodophycece or Floridece. 
These are the most beautiful of all, not only in 
the brilliancy of their coloring, but in the deli- 
cacy of their forms and patterns. The majority 
of them are crimson, rose, or some other shade 
of red (though sometimes showing purple, yel- 
low or violet), owing to the presence of phy- 
coerythrin, a pigment that outbulks the chloro- 
phyll and gives the reddish tinge. The forms 
are not large. Some have leaf-like branches 
and bear a protuberant fruit as tasteless as the 
apples of the Dead Sea shore; others are saw- 
edged, rod-like, feathery, threaded, membran- 
ous, cartilaginous. All the corallines with bases 
stone-coated with lime, all the dulses with their 
blood-red colorings, all the gelatinous sea- 
mosses from which are made Irish moss, agar- 
agar, and Japanese isinglass, belong here. 

In addition to these large divisions there are 
many plants ungrouped and unclassified; and 
standing beside them along the hills and val- 
leys of the ocean world are organisms that 
look vegetable and yet are animal. Time 



GAKDENS OF THE SEA 



185 



was when they were called " flower-animals " 
and " animal-plants," bnt the terms are ob- 
solescent. The division line between the flora 
and the fauna of the sea is not, however, too 
finely drawn, even at the present day. Many 
forms of the fauna favor the flower, the shrub, 
the branch; and yet these are but an outer 
guise — perhaps a disguise planned by nature 
whereby the animal lures prey within its reach. 
The likeness to the plant in such creatures as 
sea anemones, sponges and coral is curious 
enough; but the real interest lies deeper. The 
organisms are marvels of design, wonders of 
form and color. The care and wisdom of Crea- 
tion are not more marked in planet and solar 
system than in the tiny dwellers in the ocean. 
The smallest specimen of globigerina or for- 
aminifera — too small to be seen without the 
microscope — is moulded with perfectly radiat- 
ing arms or symmetrical shell, and the sluggish 
form of the jelly fish is cast in iris hues more 
perfect because more delicate than those of the 
lily or the burnished dove. Indeed, the mar- 
vels never cease in " the world below the brine." 
The variety — what seems the infinity — of 
marine life is merely beginning to dawn 
upon us. The discovered species mount into 
the hundreds of thousands. As fast as they 



' 'Flower- 
animals." 



The like- 
ness to 
plants 
superficial. 



Marvels of 
design and 
color. 



186 



THE OPAL SEA 



The variety 
of marine 
life. 



One-celled 
life. 



Minute 
organisms. 



become known they are duly named and 
classified. There are now nine or ten large 
branches with many classes and sub-classes 
which serve as pigeon holes for the distribution 
of all sea life. The classification is accurate 
enough perhaps but ever subject to revision ow- 
ing to newly acquired information. The end 
is not yet. We are beyond Aristotle and Pliny, 
beyond Linnasus and Cuvier; but not beyond 
new discovery. 

The simplest form of this animal life in the 
sea is found in the one-celled Protozoa. They 
are mostly creatures of microscopical size. The 
body is composed of protoplasm and, in classes 
like the foraminifera, covered with a cham- 
bered shell, or like the radiolaria encased in 
a capsule and spicules, or like the amoeba not 
covered at all. They move by contractions of 
the body, or lash themselves along with cilia; 
and they absorb food, both animal and vege- 
table, by surrounding it or engulfing it. Under 
the microscope the forms are remarkable in de- 
sign because infinitely varied and complicated. 
Bach one of them is modeled after its kind as 
though serving a special purpose in creation. 
But most of these minute organisms, though 
the gardens of the sea are filled with them, 
make slight appeal to the shore wanderer be- 



GARDENS OF THE SEA 



187 



cause practically unseen. At times a stain 
upon a rock, a discoloration upon a frond of 
sea weed, may point to the presence of some 
stray colony; but usually not even that much 
sign is apparent. 

Not so with the sponges of the branch Porif- 
era. They are marked features of the sea- 
bottom because of their bulk, their wide dif- 
fusion, and above all their varied colors. Time 
was when they were considered plants, but they 
are now positively placed in the animal king- 
dom. They are many celled and have inhalent 
pores through which sea water is drawn, and 
minute animal life extracted therefrom. Their 
forms are irregular — a mere fibrous network, 
influenced as regards its shape by circumstances 
and species. There are several classes, in one 
of which the spicules are calcareous, and in an- 
other of which they are siliceous, horny, or 
glassy. To the latter class belong the glass- 
rope sponges, the Venus flower basket and the 
Neptune's cup. The sponge of commerce is 
merely the dried skeleton of the animal with its 
color bleached or faded in process of drying. 
Alive and fastened to the rocks, their forms 
expanded and their tints showing in masses of 
light brown, yellow, red, or brilliant orange 
they make up a remarkable sea-flooring. And 



Sponges. 



Kinds and 
colors of 
sponges. 



188 



THE OPAL SEA 



Polyps, sea 
anemones, 
and corals. 



Coral 
colorings. 



Coral reefs 
and islands. 



yet there is intermingled with them life in 
other forms even more remarkable, even more 
beautiful in hue. 

Nothing in the sea excels in delicacy and va- 
riety of color the polyps and the jelly fishes 
belonging to the large branch, Ccelenterata. 
All the tints that may be wrung from the spec- 
trum are blended in sea anemones, coral, and 
Medusce. The sea anemone is attached by a 
stalk to a ledge or a rock, and the polyp within 
gathers food from the passing currents with 
tentacles that seem ceaselessly waving, clasp- 
ing and unclasping. They resemble flowers 
(asters in particular), though they take many 
forms and put on patterned colors that are 
astonishing enough. Coral is produced by a 
similar if smaller polyp, living in a small cell 
of limestone made from his own secretions. 
The stony deposit is in all colors — orange, scar- 
let, purple, green — and in all forms — branched, 
fan-shaped, sprayed, arched, rounded. When 
the polyp dies he himself hardens into lime and 
adds to the structure he and his kind have 
reared. That structure in time often becomes 
the long coral reef or the coral island of the 
southern seas, with which everyone is more or 
less familiar. 

The Medusae or jelly fishes are not attached 



GARDENS OP THE SEA 



189 



but free floating members of this branch. They 
are usually bell-shaped or mushroom-domed, 
with tentacles hanging down from underneath. 
In the great Oyanea arctica the diameter is 
often from three to five feet, and the tentacles 
trailing down and away behind are several fath- 
oms in length. This species has the power of 
discharging from its tentacle cells the lasso, 
which poisons whatever it touches and origin- 
ally gave the family the name of " sea-nettles." 
The majority of the jelly fish are not, however, 
so large and are quite harmless, leading a drift- 
ing, spineless, uneventful existence, swinging 
with the waves like a submerged soap-bubble, 
and showing always transparent hues of azure, 
saffron, rose, and opal. 

There are many of the medusoid types, 
widely divergent in form and color, and each 
type admirably fitted for drifting, for assault 
and defence, and for food gathering. The 
Portuguese man-of-war that looks like a deli- 
cate piece of Venetian glass, and the Venus 
girdle {Gestus) with its winding silver-and- 
azure ribbon of a body are the members of the 
family usually illustrated in books and set forth 
as types; and yet in every sea there are hosts 
of these transparent creatures — curled, ringed, 
belted, living necklaces with long pendants, 



Jelly 
fishes. 



Sea-nettles. 



Medusoid 



190 



THE OPAL SEA 



Living 
ribbons and 
necklaces. 



Sea 
urchins. 



Armor of 
the sea 
urchins. 



Star fishes. 



bands and borders with pale fringes, balls and 
domes of blue with violet streamers — quite as 
beautiful in their way. All of them are merely 
jelly fishes, cousins of the more common unfor- 
tunate that we find stranded on the beach after 
a storm. 

On the sand beside the jelly fish are often 
found stray members of the branch Echinoder- 
mata. The round sea urchin with calcareous 
plated shell, armed with spines, and looking 
like a chestnut burr in all save color, is one of 
the best known of the family. Why he should 
be so peculiarly well-defended with armor and 
several thousand spines, is hard to discover. 
To escape trouble he burrows and hides in the 
sand, and has even the power of making pockets 
in the solid rock, where he lies protected from 
the motion of waves and the attacks of the 
enemy. He moves about by the aid of his 
spines and tentacles, eats anything he can find, 
and seems proof against being eaten; but no 
doubt he has an enemy that circumvents him 
sooner or later. 

Almost any pool or rock basin along the coast 
will contain the five-pointed star fish which 
with the sea urchin is classed among the echi- 
noderms. It has tentacles with sucker feet 
whereby it not only clings and walks but 



GARDENS OF THE SEA 



191 



through which it breathes. And its different 
arms act like hands, enabling the animal to 
pry open and devour oysters, clams, mussels, 
and other shell fish with considerable ease. 
When it loses an arm another is immediately 
grown in its place; and, that there shall be no 
unnecessary waste, the lost arm, if so much as 
one-fifth of the disk attaches to it, will grow 
another body. Some of the species have from 
eight to thirty of these rays or spoke-like arms, 
all of them adjusted with the greatest nicety. 
The brittle stars are near relatives of the star 
fishes. The basket fish (so called from the 
basket-like appearance when the branched arms 
are drawn in) is the conspicuous example in 
the group. He walks on the tiptoes of his 
tentacles and closes up when touched. 

The crinoids are cup-shaped or lily-like echi- 
noderms. They are anchored fast by a stalk, 
much like an animal tethered to a peg in the 
ground; and they feed in a circle about their 
anchorage. Some of the family look like a 
star at the end of a fairy's wand, but the ma- 
jority of them are more like a flower on a tall 
stem. From this resemblance comes the com- 
mon designation of " sea lilies " for the liv- 
ing species, and " stone lilies " for the fossil 
forms. Like many another species of echino- 



Brittle stars. 



Sea lilies 



Stone lilies. 



192 



THE OPAL SEA 



Holothu- 
rians. 



Sea cu- 
cumbers. 



Shell fish. 



derms they drop their feathery tentacles at 
will and apparently without any lasting injury. 

The holothurians go beyond the star fishes 
in the matter of dismemberment for they break 
up into a dozen different pieces when occasion 
requires. They have a body somewhat like the 
sea worms, and might be put in the class with 
them were it not for their spicules and tenta- 
cles. There is no shell, but in its place a tough 
leathery skin. A long bottle-shape has given 
to one of the group the name of " sea cucum- 
ber," and sometimes (but erroneously) " sea 
slug." When seen in their habitat, say the 
Florida coast, their colors are most attractive. 
In China they are sought for food, and when 
prepared for the trade make the well-known 
" trepang." 

The molluscs come under the popular desig- 
nation of "shell fish" and mean to the lay 
mind primarily the oysters and clams of com- 
merce; but the class is a large one and has 
great variety. It embraces some twenty thou- 
sand extinct species and as many more of the 
living species. Every sea has its quota and 
every shore has its shell-lined beach. The shell 
is perhaps the most interesting part of the ani- 
mal to the casual observer. It is usually made 
of lime, is opaque; and within has a surface 






GARDENS OF THE SEA 



193 



that is glassy, porcelain-like, or pearly. The 
contours are always graceful; and along the in- 
ner walls the undulations of the shell surface 
produce the most beautiful of all opalescent 
hues. 

The univalves, as distinguished from the bi- 
valves, have the single spiral shell. The spiral 
is made up of mounting rings that usually turn 
to the right. There are many of these gastro- 
pods, but the great rose-colored stromb, called 
a " conch " or a " queen conch," is the most 
striking of the types. In poetry and painting 
it is the "wreathed horn" of Triton; and in 
prosaic every-day life aboard sailing vessels it 
is still used as a signal-call and a fog horn. 
The bivalves have two shells connected by a 
hinge and ligament ; and that is the weak point 
in their construction. The star fishes, drum 
fishes, drills, crabs, oyster catchers (not to 
mention human beings) pry them open and 
destroy them by millions. Nothing but rapid 
breeding keeps the family from extinction. 
And they are all beautiful in shell-form and 
color. The pearl oyster, the mussel, the scallop, 
the cockle do not exhaust the gamut of bivalve 
splendor. There are others of the family, sel- 
dom seen perhaps, that brought to the surface 
are glowing in cells of opal, topaz, and ame- 



Beauty of 
the shell. 



Univalves 
and bi- 
valves. 



Conches, 

oysters, 

clams. 



Scallops 
and cockles. 



194 



THE OPAL SEA 



Cephalo- 



The pearly 
nautilus. 



thystine-purple ; and have lines that gracefully 
mimic sea waves in their rise and fall. 

The cephalopods with their coiled shell have 
many extinct species, and many living that are 
as remarkable for their ability to change their 
color at will as for the color itself ; but only one 
of the living group has interest for those who 
are not scientists. This is the pearly nautilus, 
the sole modern representative of the Tetra- 
branchiates. It has become familiar in almost 
every household through the poem of Dr. 
Holmes, for it is 

"The ship of pearl, which poets feign 
Sails the unshadowed main, 
The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings." 

Pliny, centuries ago, wrote of it as stretching 
out a " membrane of marvelous thinness which 
acts as a sail spread out to the wind." With 
this sail it "makes its way along the deep, 
mimicking the appearance of a light Liburnian 
bark, while if anything chances to cause it 
alarm, in an instant it sinks to the bottom." 
Whether it sails the sea or not is still a mooted 
question; but there is no doubt about its spiral 
shell with its different compartments in which 
the animal has successively lived, its " irised 



GARDENS OF THE SEA 



195 



ceiling/' its " sunless crypt/' and its " shining 
archway." 

In the same family with this romantic beauty 
of the sea is another eephalopod, a species with- 
out a shell belonging to the Dibranchiates, 
which interests not for his beauty like the nau- 
tilus, but for his repellent look. This is the 
great polyp, the octopus. He is a monster of 
the deep and in body is known to be nine or ten 
feet in length by six feet in breadth, with ten- 
tacles thirty or forty feet in reach. He feeds 
upon anything living and in turn is fed upon 
by the sperm whale. It is, indeed, from the 
stomach of whales that evidence as to his size 
has been obtained. It is claimed by several 
writers that they have seen him in the life, but 
certainly the sight is a very rare one. All of 
the tribe have ink bags, which they discharge 
to cloud the water when attacked; and all are 
formidable antagonists fighting with both tooth 
and tentacle. In spite of a repellent look, 
which they must possess judging from the 
smaller specimens in the aquariums, they are 
beautifully patterned with the most delicately 
blended reds, browns, violets, and pinks; and 
some of them have gold-rimmed telescopic eyes 
as soft and pretty as those of a gazelle. 

The Crustacea represent one of the higher 



The 
octopus. 



Size and 
equipment 
of the 
octopus. 



196 



THE OPAL SEA 



Crabs, 
lobsters and 
barnacles. 



The hard 
shell, how 
formed. 



Equipment 
for defense 
and attack. 



forms of sea life and one of the most widely- 
distributed. There are ten thousand living spe- 
cies in the class, to be found in almost every 
sea; and they have almost every proportion 
from the microscopic to the gigantic. All the 
different varieties of crabs, lobsters, craw fish, 
shrimps, prawns, barnacles and acorn shells be- 
long to it. The general name, Crustacea, comes 
from the hard calcareous casing which every 
member of the family wears. It is in kind a 
jointed armor, grown and colored by the outer 
skin, and cast off or " shed " at periods when 
the wearer has become too large for it. A new 
shell is speedily grown in its place, but until 
it is hardened the crustacean hides in sand or 
rock or weed. The equipment for defense and 
attack in this class is something extraordinary. 
Their bodies are constructed for bending, twist- 
ing, jumping; they have members for swim- 
ming, feet for walking, legs for burrowing, 
claws hooked and toothed for grasping and 
tearing, and jaws for grinding. In addition they 
are given antennce for touch, compound eyes 
for seeing, sense organs for smell and taste, 
and, finally, respiratory organs for either land 
or sea. 

With such resources in attack and defense it 
is not surprising to find a belligerent spirit. 



GAKDENS OF THE SEA 



197 



All the members of the large sub-class, Mala- 
costraca, are carnivorous, eating anything they 
can find whether dead or alive. They are the 
true sea scavengers; and yet each crab in the 
sea is ever and always a fighter and a killer. 
They are no respecters of kind, killing and 
eating their weaker brothers without the slight- 
est hesitancy; and being eaten in turn with 
no great struggle. The calmness and ease with 
which one crab pulls another to pieces and 
devours him seems quite unparalleled among 
the animals of the land. And yet with all the 
savagery and ferocity of these cannibals they 
are given, not hideous and repulsive colors, but 
delicate hues of red, reddish-brown, steel-blue, 
and yellow. 

And why not beautiful color in the sea life ? 
If the birds of the air and the flowers of the 
field have it, why not the creeping things of the 
deep, and the algce of the beaches? Color is, 
indeed, the sign of vitality, the symbol of life. 
Strength, exuberance, endurance go with it; 
and in this respect the sea is perhaps beyond 
the land. All its shallows are aglow with color. 
On the eastern coast of Mexico the sea gardens, 
seen through a water glass, look like autumn- 
tinged uplands in the days of Indian summer. 
Submerged in a blue-green atmosphere, and 



Fighters 
and killers 



Color of sea 
life. 



198 



THE OPAL SEA 



In the 

Mexican 

gulf. 



Seen 

through a 
water glass. 



Tropical 
fishes. 



lighted by the broken sunbeam that falls not 
straight but in a curved line like a spent rifle 
ball, the view becomes abnormal, astonishing, 
bewildering. For there one sees great tangles 
of olive-purple fucus and laminaria, lilac thick- 
ets of branching madrepore, patches of " blood- 
flower" coral, beds of golden sponges, hillsides 
of crimson-tentacled anemones, valleys filled 
with swaying sea-feathers, all sown broadcast, 
scattered at haphazard in the bottom of the 
sea. There in every grotto and under every 
rock are scurrying squids and shrimps and scar- 
let crabs with pearl oysters and " chambered " 
nautiluses, star fish, sea lilies, sea urchins, bar- 
nacles, acorn shells, boring annelids, and wind- 
ing sea worms. And there, also, with jelly fish 
gleaming in transparent opal, and chains of 
salpce pearly with phosphorescence, slowly move 
across the meadows and around the sea cliffs, 
myriads of shore fishes modeled in a thousand 
curious forms and decorated with gold, silver, 
and moss-agate colorings. Schools of black- 
barred coral fishes (sometimes called " angel 
fishes ") wind through the clumps of madre- 
pore; trigger fishes (Balistes Carolinensis), 
with back fins that lock at the will of the pos- 
sessors, wander aimlessly over the algce; parrot 
fishes with brilliant glancing colors browse 



GARDENS OF THE SEA 



199 



along the reefs of coral; file fishes with tawny 
velvet skins circle the submerged rocks looking 
for barnacles. 

Swifter moving, more alert, ever eager for 
prey are the red snappers with rose-red scales 
and blue-outlined fins, the pompanos traveling 
in vast schools like their cousins the mackerels, 
the cabrillas, with dark fins and barred flanks, 
beating along the bottom for small fish and 
crabs. And occasionally through these beauti- 
ful gardens there is a scattering in flight of all 
the smaller fishes as some lone, black-muzzled 
porpoise rushes across the scene or thrashes the 
green water into foam with the eagerness of 
a capture. The blue sharks are there, too, 
though they spread less terror than the por- 
poises. Not even the saw fish — the shark-like 
bravo with six feet of saw-edged snout with 
which, it is said, he fights the whale — is so fear- 
compelling as the plunging, swift-traveling por- 
poise. 

There is more or less terror in these sea gar- 
dens at all times. The chase and sudden death 
are constant happenings, for practically all the 
ocean dwellers are carnivorous. Each one kills 
and eats and in turn is killed and eaten. The sea 
lives upon itself, consuming and is consumed. 
It might be thought that such self-destruction 



Red 

snappers 
and pom- 
panos. 



Sharks and 
porpoises. 



The chase 
and the 
death. 



200 



THE OPAL SEA 



Changes in 
the sea life. 



Testimony 
of the rocks. 



could result only in extinction, annihilation. 
But no; the sea and its life have not declined 
in any way. Again, one might think from the 
enormous reproductive capacity of the ocean 
broods, from the millions of eggs of each her- 
ring, lobster, and oyster, that the sea would 
overflow with swarming hordes. But no; it 
has not gained or increased. Has it changed in 
any way since the foundations of the earth 
were laid down? Apparently not. The Cam- 
brian, Ordovician, and Silurian rocks give tes- 
timony that many a deep sea group has not 
varied the slightest, has not evolved a scale or 
a joint in, let us say, millions of years. Such 
forms of life as the actinozoa, the brachiopods, 
the gastropods, the pteropods, the Crustacea are 
the same to-day as in the earliest ages; and it 
is a fair inference that the medusce, the holo- 
thurians and other life not found in fossil form, 
because without shells, existed also in the Cam- 
brian epoch. 

This is quite in accord with nature's most 
obvious design. She is determined to maintain 
the status quo — the existing order of things. 
All her efforts are directed to that end. The 
sea itself is in a continual state of transition, 
and yet it remains the same. It changes by cur- 
rent, tide, and evaporation, changes by tempera- 



GAKDENS OF THE SEA 



201 



ture and density, changes by life and death; 
and all that there may be no change. It de- 
stroys that it may live, while apparently living 
only that it may destroy. Every part of it is 
volatilized, undergoes disintegration, seemingly 
passes away ; and yet the whole endures, retain- 
ing its eternal youth and its eternal beauty. 



Nature 
maintain- 
ing the 



order. 



CHAPTEE X 



DWELLERS IN THE DEEP 



Marine 
Life in the 
great 
depths. 



The beautiful sea gardens of the Bermudas 
or the Bahamas, the upland meadows of the 
bench and the shallow, are not the only places 
where marine life flourishes. It was thought 
for many centuries that there was no other sea 
world than this, long believed that nothing 
could live out of the sunlight; and that the 
great depths were cold, barren, lifeless spaces. 
We calmly assumed that beyond our vision there 
could be nothing — a conclusion quite worthy of 
the King of Dahomey. But happily the dredg- 
ings of the Challenger have corrected us. 
There is life of many kinds in the great depths, 
and in abundance. Twenty thousand sea 
urchins brought up at one haul of the dredge 
would seem to suggest as much. 

And are we quite right in still believing that 
there is no light in the ocean depths? Sun- 
light we feel reasonably sure is dissipated and 
lost in a hundred or more fathoms of water; 
but is there no other light? The dwellers in 
202 



DWELLERS IN THE DEEP 



203 



the depths have eyes — highly organized and 
very sensitive eyes — and it is not believable that 
nature made them without purpose. That is 
quite contrary to her practice. And she some- 
times eliminates a member if unused. The 
stream-fish in the waters of the Mammoth Cave 
are blind, became blind by being plunged in 
continual darkness; but not so the majority of 
fish that live in the deep sea. From which it 
would seem that the dwellers in the ocean 
depths have eyes that are in continual use — 
eyes that are perhaps adapted to another kind 
of light than sunlight. 

It is explained by naturalists that there is 
phosphorescence or luminescence in the depths, 
that the fishes themselves possess it and flash 
it at will, and that their eyes are adapted to it. 
Very likely they can see by it to some extent; 
but is that the only light, is that sufficient to 
account for the marvellous telescopic eyes of 
some of the octopuses ? We may be wrong about 
sunlight not penetrating to the great depths, 
never reaching beyond a hundred or more fath- 
oms of water. We keep thinking of our sun- 
light, of the yellow, red and blue rays that make 
up white sunlight; but what of the far end of 
the spectrum — the X rays that were discov- 
ered only a few years ago ? The dark ray pene- 



The ■prob- 
lem of 
light. 



How do the 

bottom 

dwellers 



Phosphor- 
escence and 
lumines- 



204 



THE OPAL SEA 



The violet 
rays. 



Other 
lights in 
the depths. 



Lighting 
power, of 
lumines- 
cence. 



trates opaque substances and travels where the 
ordinary sunlight is turned back, reflected. Is 
it not possible that this same ray may reach 
through sea water to the lowest depths? And 
is it not further possible that the great watch- 
crystal eyes of, say, the lantern fishes were es- 
pecially constructed to receive just that beam? 
Besides there may be still other lights — more 
lights than we have dreamt of in our philosophy 
— down there under the wave. The sperm 
whale that sees so indifferently upon the sur- 
face, goes down to the depths in his search for 
the octopus. By what light does he see his 
prey ? Or does he scent the strong musk of the 
octopus and guide his course by that alone?* 

As for the phosphorescence or luminescence 
with which many of the deep sea fishes are en- 
dowed, there is little known about either its 
extent or its use. It may have no more illu- 
minating power in the sea than a candle in a 
cave. And as a candle is used by a human being 
to prowl about with in the night, so the lumi- 
nescence of the fish may be only an individual 
light that enables its possessor to go in and 
out of dark places. It is assumed by naturalists 

* Mr. Charles H. Townsend, the director of the New 
York Aquarium, tells me it is doubtful if whales ever 
descend to very great depths. 



DWELLERS IN THE DEEP 



205 



that the lamp-like contrivances at the end of 
the antennce in some fishes (notably the angler- 
fishes) are to enable the fish to see or dazzle 
prey; but it may be only a nervous manifesta- 
tion indicative of fear, a defensive expedient to 
frighten enemies, or possibly an allurement for 
the opposite sex. The numerous hordes of 
small creatures that float on the sea surface 
and are known as " plankton " emit light, like 
the fireflies in the grass ; but the reason for the 
luminescence at either the sea surface or the 
sea bottom is not easily determined. 

It seems that many of the polyps, medusce, 
annelids, echinoderms, molluscs and crusta- 
ceans have luminous species; and that among 
the bottom dwellers the lantern fishes are espe- 
cially provided for in the matter of luminous 
glands in the head or tail, or perhaps in regular 
spots or photophores along the sides of the 
body. Others of the species have lights near 
the eyes, and others again have an electric light, 
as it were, suspended from a thin wire-like 
bracket projecting from the top of the head. 
All of these fishes are grotesque, somewhat dis- 
torted specimens, being heavy of head and 
small of body, with exaggerated eyes, large 
mouths, and fang-like teeth. The bodies have 
not the graceful proportions of the surface 



Plankton. 



Lantern 
fishes with 
photo- 
phores. 



Grotesque 
quality of 
deep sea 
fishes. 



206 



THE OPAL SEA 



Oceanic 
pressure. 



Its effect 
on fishes. 



fishes. Some species look telescoped (Argyro- 
pelecus), some are drawn out like lizards (Syn- 
odus f ceteris), some have an enormous back fin 
like the lancet fish (Alepisaurus ferox). The 
great majority of them seem abnormal in de- 
velopment. And that may be due to the pe- 
culiar circumstance of oceanic density. 

Living twenty thousand feet under the sea 
the bottom fishes are, of course, subject to great 
pressure. The estimate has been made of one 
ton to the square inch for each one thousand 
fathoms. This, in the great depths, would 
mean four or five tons to the square inch; and, 
while such pressure is equalized by being felt 
on all sides, it is not possible to conceive of a 
fish enduring it unless peculiarly and specially 
constructed for it. A bottle of champagne sent 
down a thousand fathoms may come up intact, 
cork and all; but the wine will be brackish. 
The pressure will drive the sea water through 
the cork. Multiply this pressure by five and 
what surface fish could withstand it? But the 
bottom dwellers have few bones. There is too 
much carbonic-acid gas down there to tolerate 
an extensive bony structure. The scales are 
thin, the skins velvety, the bodies cartilaginous, 
transparent, so soft and pliable that they are 
perhaps porous. They do not resist the squeeze 



DWELLERS IN THE DEEP 



207 



but yield to it like jelly fishes. Yet for all the 
weight of water there is sufficient stability of 
structure to maintain distinct types; and in 
spite of it the sperm whale, with his great bulk, 
goes down into the sea and comes back again 
to the surface none the worse for wear. The 
bottom dweller, however, does not usually fare 
so well as the whale when he comes to the 
surface. With the pressure removed from him 
he becomes very limp, wanting in fibre, quite 
formless; and soon dies as a man might die 
who is transported six or eight miles skyward 
in a balloon. 

All the deep sea fishes are enormous eaters. 
There being nothing to eat but the life about 
them they live upon each other. Every facility 
for killing and devouring is provided — lumi- 
nescence to dazzle, swiftness and strength to 
overtake and overpower, knife-blade teeth for 
tearing, abnormally large jaws for crushing. 
Whatever the prey, or however large it may be, 
there is little trouble in swallowing it. The 
mouth yawns like a cavern and the stomach 
distends to hold a body even larger than the 
swallower. 

For defence or escape from pursuit these 
fishes have little more than the gloom of their 
abode, the mud into which some of them bur- 



Peculiar 
design of 
the deep 
sea fishes. 



Their 

voracious 

appetites. 



208 



THE OPAL SEA 



Equipment 
for defense 
and flight. 



The dismal 
existence. 



Coloring of 

bottom 

fishes 



row and hide, and an inconspicuous back color- 
ing to disguise them. The crabs and sea 
urchins are defended somewhat by thin shells 
and spines, the octopus by tentacles and ink- 
bag, the medusce by poison; while some of the 
others are given power in flight, or breed to 
brave destruction. Just how they manage to 
exist and keep their numbers is something not 
well understood as yet. In fact the whole life 
down there seems somewhat dark, distorted, 
and dismal. But perhaps we are not the best 
judges of it. It has been said that to un- 
derstand how an octopus feels about existence 
and happiness one would have to become an 
octopus. 

And it may well be that there is some loveli- 
ness in the under-world of the violet sunbeam. 
For many of the dwellers there have great 
beauty of color. The gloom of the waters has 
not given them a pallor or deathlike hue, though 
a number of them have black or gray colorings 
or are black-backed and silver-scaled. There 
are red, pink, lilac, even bright green fishes, 
and fishes with scales of gold, topaz, and silver, 
living in the depths. All the crustaceans are 
as brightly hued in one water as another, the 
jelly fish are violet and opal, the sea cucumbers 
purple and green, the corals and sponges al- 



DWELLEKS IN THE DEEP 



209 



most any or all the colors of the rainbow. In 
fact the bottom of the sea is not so very dif- 
ferent from the shallows as we have imagined. 
It has its peculiar conditions of light, tempera- 
ture, and pressure, and in it have been placed 
a fauna, and possibly a flora, of especial fitness 
to meet those conditions; but otherwise it is 
substantially the same water and life as else- 
where. 

The true ocean rovers are, however, the sur- 
face fishes that travel in schools; and these are 
perhaps more rapacious, more destructive, than 
their brethren in the pit. No doubt all the 
life in the sea is plagued with a morbid hunger. 
The appetite in fishes seems never wanting; 
and complete digestion with some of them is 
only a matter of half an hour. Hence the 
slaughter that goes on unendingly. It is su- 
perinduced by hunger; and yet it is said that 
the bluefish, even when gorged, still kills for 
the pure love of killing. If so he is an excep- 
tion. Nature sometimes produces a monstros- 
ity, but with the majority of her creatures she 
enables them to kill only that they may eat 
and live. 

But whatever the motive, whether for food 
or for frolic, these roving schools of fishes are 
certainly proficient in the fine art of murder. 



Peculiar 
conditions 
in the sea 



Surface 
fishes. 



The blue- 
fish. 



210 



THE OPAL SEA 



Herrings 
and por- 
poises. 



Menhaden 
and their 
destruction. 



They follow the prey like packs of wolves ; and 
in turn are followed, band succeeding band, in- 
creasing in size as they decrease in numbers. 
The herrings eat the smaller fish, even their own 
young, they are harried by the bluefishes until 
a trail of blood stains the water, while follow- 
ing the bluefishes come the insatiate porpoises. 
Nothing saves the weaker ones but breed. 
Many thousands of eggs are spawned that a 
dozen or more may be hatched and brought to 
maturity. Billions are lost; yes, but millions 
survive. The herrings move on the sea in un- 
countable numbers, in banks that are miles in 
length and width, in windrows so vast that 
they perhaps keep passing one given point in 
unbroken succession for months at a time. 
Just so with the menhaden. A catch in a 
purse-net of half a million is not infrequent. 
Such numbers are sufficient to withstand all 
the ravages of the natural enemy. The bass, 
the haddock, and the pollock may kill to their 
heart's content, and still the menhaden will 
hold their own. They cannot, however, with- 
stand the great destroyer — man. When whole 
shoals of them are caught at one fell swoop 
and dumped into the hold of a vessel to be tried 
out for oil, nothing but destruction to the spe- 
cies can result. That, however, does not seem 



DWELLEES IN THE DEEP 



211 



to worry mankind any more than his prototype 
in slaughter, the bluefish. They neither of them 
cease from killing until there is nothing left 
to kill. 

With the mackerels it is breed, again, that 
saves them from extinction. A single female 
will give forth at one spawning upward of two 
hundred thousand eggs. With such fecundity 
it is something of a wonder how the species is 
kept within limits. It has, indeed, been gravely 
estimated that were all the mackerel eggs that 
are spawned brought to maturity the whole sea 
in a short time would be a solid mass of im- 
movable fish. But the mackerel has many ene- 
mies and his ranks are slashed by almost every 
fish in the sea. He travels, with millions of 
his companions, in schools; and seeks by flight 
and dodging to escape the enemy. A very beau- 
tiful sight it is to see them wheeling with a 
swift flash of their silver sides in the sunlight, 
sheering off from an attacking band. But usu- 
ally the feint avails little. The sea wolves take 
toll and blood flows; but the mackerels, veering 
and tacking, losing on the flanks and rear but 
ever closing up the broken lines, keep mov- 
ing on. 

The flying fish is a food fish, too, but not so 
plentiful as the herring or the mackerel. His 



The 
mackerels. 



Movement 
of the 
school. 



212 



THE OPAL SEA 



The Hying 
fish. 



How he 
flies. 



Vibration 
and sailing. 



numbers are depleted by many destroyers, and 
besides he has an ugly habit of feeding upon 
his own kind. Cannibalism is not infrequent 
among all the sea fishes. And still, that the 
flying fish should not become extinct, nature 
provided for him a better expedient ttan the 
mackerel's attempt to hide in the multitude of 
the school. She gave him abnormally long pec- 
toral fins that act as wings wherewith he flies 
or sails through the air. There is still some 
question about the exact manner of the flight. 
Seen at a distance, the fish seems to throw him- 
self out of the water with a screw-like churn 
or twist of his powerful tail; and once 
launched in the air to sail rather than to fly. 
The flight is maintained not usually for more 
than one or two hundred yards, and yet fre- 
quently so far as a quarter of a mile. In the 
air the fish seems to be somewhat wooden and 
apparently holds his body rigid, riding the 
breeze like a clay pigeon. When, however, he 
rises from under the fore foot of a ship, and 
one looks down upon him as he rises, the thin 
wing-like fins are seen to vibrate and to fan the 
air almost as swiftly as the wings of a hum- 
ming bird. Whether the vibration is momen- 
tary or long-continued is difficult to determine ; 
but it would seem that the wings propel the fish 



DWELLERS IN THE DEEP 



213 



for a short distance, at least, as well as catch 
the wind like a flattened sail. 

This flight of the flying fish often serves him 
in good stead, but it does not invariably fur- 
nish a safe exit from danger. The albicore or 
tunny travels as fast under the water as the 
fish in the air. Let the flier turn at a sharp 
angle and the albicore does likewise. The chase 
is thus often long-continued. The wings of the 
flier become weary. Perhaps he dips into the 
sea, striking his tail first, or plunges through 
the crest of a wave head first, for a second, and 
then is once more in the air. The contact with 
the water seems to renew his strength; and 
yet he wearies the second time sooner than the 
first. At last, after many descents and flights, 
perhaps the albicore leaps from the water and 
the remorseless jaw closes upon the exhausted 
flier in mid-air. 

In addition to albicores, dolphins, bonitos, 
porpoises — all kinds of ocean racers — the flying 
fish has also enemies in the air. When his pur- 
suers in the sea force him from the water, the 
birds of prey hawk at him from above. Be- 
tween them both he is often sadly beset, and 
yet strangely enough his numbers do not seem 
to decrease. He holds his own in spite of ad- 
versities. 



Chased by 
the albicore. 



The 
capture. 



Bird 

enemies of 
the flying 
fish. 



214 



THE OPAL SEA 



The cory- 
phene. 



Swiftness 
of the 
porpoise. 



Speed and 
power of 
the sea 
rovers. 



The surface fishes, both those that flee and 
those that follow, are all agile enough. The 
twist and turn of the coryphene (popularly but 
erroneously called a "dolphin"), the speed of 
the albicore, the sharp gyration of the mackerel 
or the herring, the flight of the flying fish are the 
mere commonplaces of sea life. Even the lum- 
bering, somewhat-stupid shark, who is more of 
a scavenger than a killer, will sometimes dart 
upward with the greatest swiftness, beheading 
a fish with a single snap as cleanly as a guillo- 
tine might do it. And as for the porpoises 
(properly dolphins) they are the embodiment 
of easy strength as they bowl along the surface 
like a string of hurdle jumpers, rising and 
plunging in perfect curves. They seem to move 
slowly and yet nothing in the sea moves swifter. 
They can run ahead of a fast-traveling steamer, 
and have little trouble in outrunning the waves 
upon the surface, which indicates a speed of, 
say, thirty miles an hour at least. 

All of the sea rovers are constructed for 
speed. They are long, thin fish, large at the 
shoulder, and tapering away toward the tail. 
They have scales as smooth as mother-of-pearl, 
or skins like velvet that slip through the water 
with the least possible friction. The ease with 
which they glide when at play, the arrow-like 



DWELLEKS IN THE DEEP 



215 



swiftness with which they rush forward when 
frightened or chasing, are indicative of tremen- 
dous strength in proportion to size. Those who 
have caught tuna at Catalina, or tarpon along 
the Florida coast, or harpooned sword-fish off 
Block Island, have some idea of how great is 
that strength. A strong-swimming man, weigh- 
ing, say, one hundred and eighty pounds, can 
be " played " and dragged ashore from the 
sea with less tackle, less effort, and less time 
than a ten-pound sea bass. To be sure the 
fish has the advantage of being in his ele- 
ment; but how very well fitted he is to that 
element ! 

And how easily the tarpon twists and turns, 
plunges down the side of a reef, runs along a 
deep sea trough, or perhaps in play comes rush- 
ing to the surface and leaps ten feet into the 
air, completing a half-circle of blazing silver ! 
The Calif ornian tunas when following flying 
fish often strike and catch the prey in mid-air, 
returning to the water, head first, in the most 
graceful arches imaginable. And again the 
porpoises. As they travel across the seas in 
schools they clear the water in their plungings 
and no more; but they are capable of taking a 
high jump with the best of the jumpers, and 
when surrounded and frightened they leap over 



Fitness to 
the element. 



Tarpons 
and tunas. 



Jumping 
porpoises. 



216 



THE OPAL SEA 



Coloring of 

school 

fishes. 



Protective 
colorings. 



Changeable 
colorings. 



a boat and crew almost as readily as over the 
line of a net. 

The school fishes are by no means of uniform 
coloring, and yet in a general way they are al- 
most all of them alike in being blue-green or 
olive-colored on the backs, silvery on the sides, 
and whitish on the bellies. It has been said 
that this coloring was given them for conceal- 
ment and protection. The bird looking down 
upon them from above sees only the shading 
of their backs into the dark of the water; the 
shark looking up from beneath sees their light 
bellies and sides blending with the light coming 
from above. For a similar reason perhaps the 
flounder flattened in the sand was given a back 
that matches the sand as exactly as a tree toad's 
skin the branch he is resting upon. This gift 
of adaptation of color would seem something 
more than accident or coincidence. Many fish 
in the sea have tones and shades that conceal, 
and, what is more remarkable, many have the 
power of changing their colorings at will. This 
has been long known, and recently quite con- 
clusively proven, in the aquariums. Changing 
the backgrounds of the tanks has resulted in 
many fishes changing their hues to correspond. 

But whatever the color, or for whatsoever 
purpose given, it is generally beautiful color. 



DWELLERS IN THE DEEP 



217 



Sometimes a fish is not marked or barred or 
hued in an interesting way as, for instance, the 
grayish-black and dirty-white of the shark or 
the dull lead-colors of the pollock; hut the 
school fishes, though they are brought forth in 
millions, have all of them tints of loveliness. 
What, for example, could be more superb in 
color than the back of the common mackerel ! 
The green of the peacock's neck is not so bril- 
liant nor the blue of the sea itself so intense. 
The silvery sides of the tarpon, made up of 
scales that are like thin plates of pearl, what 
again can equal them in lustre ! And has there 
ever been known a more beautiful fish than the 
rarely-seen coryphene ! He is a wonderwork of 
blue and gold, flashing in the sunlight with 
opalescent colorings, and under shadow chang- 
ing into shades of silver. This is the so-called 
" dolphin " that poets have chosen to picture as 
growing more beautiful in coloring as he dies; 
but there is more poetry than truth in the fig- 
ure. The fish changes hue, true enough, but 
he is never so beautiful as when alive in the 
water chasing the flying fish, his long dorsal 
fin of gold gleaming like an arrow of light on 
his blue-green back. 

There are other inhabitants of the sea, wan- 
derers that travel about the poles or around the 



Coloring of 
the mack- 
erel 



Beauty of 
the cory- 
phene 



218 



THE OPAL SEA 



The ceta- 
ceans. 



Many 
kinds of 
whales. 



Dull color- 
ing of 
whales 



equatorial belt, and yet are not fishes at all. 
The whales, for instance, are popularly consid- 
ered as fishes whereas they are warm-blooded 
mammals. This is true of the porpoises, the 
grampuses, the narwhals, the killers, the black 
fishes. They are all cetaceans and live not in 
the depths but on the surface. In form they 
resemble the fishes, and have the fishes' tail 
wherewith they propel themselves; moreover, 
they are gregarious, traveling in schools for 
great distances, following the chase like the 
other sea rovers. But they are mammals, never- 
theless. The whales are of many kinds and in 
popular nomenclature are right whales, blue, 
white, and gray whales, bowheads, hump-backs, 
fin-backs, sulphur-bottoms. The larger ones 
are toothless and live upon tiny crustaceans, 
molluscs and jelly fish; others have rows of 
teeth and feed upon squid, herring and mack- 
erel. 

Taking them for all in all the cetaceans are 
not a picturesque group. They are wonderfully 
equipped for the consumption of small sea life 
en masse (one rorqual perhaps swallowing thou- 
sands of herring at a single gulp) and have 
great adaptability to circumstance ; but in form 
they are odd, though not clumsy, and in color 
they are dull, sometimes quite dismally so. 



DWELLEKS IN THE DEEP 



219 



They have no scales to reflect opalescence like 
the fishes but in their place a blackish or dirty- 
white skin that is interesting only for the ease 
with which it slips through the water. The 
larger members of the family are not often seen 
along the steamer lanes of to-day. Occasionally 
a black back will heave up at a distance, look- 
ing somewhat like an enormous water-soaked 
log, and a spout of moisture-laden breath will 
go up from it; but the sight is an unusual one. 

For the whales have their enemies and the 
tribe has not increased. The sword fish, un- 
abashed by bulk, is said to drive headlong into 
the blubber of the great Mysticetus and killers 
{Orca gladiator) in bands tear him with their 
teeth almost as easily as a hermit crab disposes 
of a collapsed oyster. Almost everything in the 
sea has an enemy, and from high to low there 
is fierce struggle for life. Only a very few of 
the ocean rovers escape. 

The turtle is one of the few. He seems to go 
his way in peace, moving slowly, never in a 
hurry, eating what he can get, and seeming to 
have neither friend nor foe. On sea or land, 
in the depths or on the surface, he is always 
at home. His breathing apparatus is peculiar 
in its large expanse of lung, and he exists read- 
ily in either air or water. Sometimes for many 



Scarcity of 
whales. 



Enemies of 
the whale. 



The sea 
turtle. 



220 



THE OPAL SEA 



Habits of 
the turtle. 



The seals. 



hours he lies half-buried in the bottom mud, 
or floats sleepily on the surface with a round 
circle of back projecting above water, his head 
and flippers hanging down listlessly. Then for 
days he suns himself on the sandy beach of 
some sea island and becomes quite a land lub- 
ber. He is a famous swimmer making long 
journeys with ease, he can go for weeks with- 
out food of any sort; and he is sheathed in an 
armour that none of his sea fellows can break, 
and none, except possibly the sperm whale, at- 
tempts to swallow unbroken. By his equip- 
ment, his frugality, and his singular vitality 
he is famously fitted for endurance. And yet 
perhaps not more so than another ocean waif — 
the seal. 

The fur seal of the Alaska coast and north- 
ward is the type though there are many species 
of the tribe — sea lions, sea leopards, and sea 
bears, with harp seals, ringed seals, saddle-back 
seals, bearded seals, ribbon seals, hooded seals. 
The ordinary fur seal is perhaps the best swim- 
mer in the ocean. In strength and in swiftness 
he seems quite unparalleled. He travels almost 
as fast as a porpoise, and yet strange enough 
when born he cannot swim at all. Mr. Bullen 
has it that his mother takes him into the water 
and teaches him his first strokes. If so he 



DWELLERS IN THE DEEP 



221 



proves an apt pupil and when, after several 
months, he leaves the rookery on the seal island 
where he was born, he sets out for the open 
sea quite alone and quite undismayed. There 
he cruises, hunts, plays, eats, sleeps — a true 
ocean wanderer. His fur and his fat keep him 
from any chill, and his tremendous agility and 
swiftness keep him supplied with squid and 
fish. His appetite is something phenomenal — 
in captivity fifty or more pounds of fish being 
required daily by a single seal. After gorg- 
ing himself he goes to sleep floating on his 
back with flippers folded, his head bobbing up 
and down upon the waves, as peacefully as upon 
a bed of roses. There occasionally a shark finds 
him and bites him through and through or a 
killer whale swallows him whole; but usually 
he is safe in the sea. It is only when he returns 
to the islands to breed that his great enemy — 
man — makes havoc among his numbers. Not 
his flesh but his coat is wanted. With the ex- 
ception of the pearl oyster he is about the only 
dweller in the ocean that is killed for his 
beauty. 

All the life of the sea, beautiful or otherwise, 
destroys and is destroyed. Again comes up that 
seeming contradiction of purpose, that seeming 
paradox of life and death both being necessary 



Birth and 
growth of 
the fur seal. 



Killed for 
his coat. 



222 



THE OPAL SEA 



All the sea 

life is 



Endurance 
of the type. 



What lies 
beyond. 



parts of a plan. And once again the apparent 
inconsistency of beauty being given to creatures 
that are sent to destruction by the millions. 
Why the effort since it is to be so soon nullified ? 
Why the beauty since it must so soon perish? 
Is there naught coming out of sea travail that 
shall live and be glad forever ? 

Ah yes ! the species endures, the type con- 
tinues though the individual is lost. It is the 
come and go of countless individuals, each one 
having its day and passing on, that preserves 
the type, keeps the species active, virile, youth- 
ful, beautiful. The sea renews itself by change 
in every part. Life and death are but the pro- 
cesses of renewal. The units matter not, though 
they are not given over wholly to misery. 
There is a joy in life, an exaltation in being 
and living. The very struggle to maintain life 
proves it. There may be an even greater joy 
in death. Who shall say what lies beyond, 
what rests in store, for the humble dweller in 
the deep ? The eye of gold, the scale of pearl, 
may appear again in newer splendor; the ex- 
uberant life may be renewed with even greater 
vitality. Who shall say? 



CHAPTER XI 



GRAY WINGS 



The sea wherein life first began is still the 
supporter of life. It feeds its own, sustains 
itself, and yet always has something left over 
for the dwellers upon the land. Sooner or later 
all of nature's children return to it, as desert 
animals troop by night to a pool in the waste. 
It is the source and from it directly or indi- 
rectly comes the food and drink that supply 
the world. In its depths in unthinkable num- 
bers are the ever-hungry fishes, along its coasts 
are the rapacious herds of seal and otter, and 
by its shores are the eagles gathered together — 
the birds of prey that follow the sea chase and 
are always in at the death. 

If possible the bird is a little more voracious 
than the fish. The ordinary linnet or thrush 
of the garden is glutton enough in his absorp- 
tion of insect life ; but he has no such boundless 
appetite as the gull or the gannet. The sea 
birds seem impossible to satisfy. The brown 
pelican wheels for hours above a school of 
223 



The sea as 
the source 
of all. 



Voracity of 
sea birds. 



224 



THE OPAL SEA 



The peli- 
cans. 



The 
■plunger. 



Cormorants, 

shags, 

divers. 



fishes, plunging head first with shut wings 
every few minutes, his huge bill snapping up 
luckless victims with great certainty. Once 
caught perhaps the fish is not instantly lifted 
out of water, but is manoeuvred until he is 
quietly slipped into the large distensible pouch 
under the lower mandible. Then the head is 
tossed backward and the fish glides down the 
long throat. This performance may go on from 
dawn to dusk with few interruptions; and the 
next day the pursuit be taken up with renewed 
ardor. Success does not seem to weary him in 
the least. All the appliances to make fishing 
easy and profitable are freely bestowed by na- 
ture as though the pelican were a favored crea- 
tion. The bill is not only sharp and hooked at 
the end, but is rough-edged so that no slippery 
specimen can wriggle out of it, the body is as 
tough as leather to withstand the blow upon the 
water in continuous plunging from above, the 
head and neck are muscled to the last degree 
that the bill may move swiftly and unerringly. 
The whole machine works perfectly. 

Always where the pelicans and gannets 
gather, perched along the shore and on the 
rocks, are hordes of cormorants, shags, divers — 
birds quite as clever in chasing fish under water 
as the pelican is in catching them from above. 



GRAY WINGS 



225 



From the rocks they keep slipping into the sea 
every few minutes and dipping out of sight. 
They move slowly enough when swimming on 
the surface; but once under water their heads 
and necks stretch forward, their bodies seem to 
draw out behind, and, propelled by foot and 
wing, they move with the ease, the swiftness, 
and the directness of submarine boats. The 
small fish cannot travel so fast nor can they 
by darting or turning elude pursuit. The shag 
usually comes to the surface with a squirmer in 
his file-edged bill, and if the fish is not con- 
veniently caught for swallowing, it is tossed 
in the air and caught anew by the beak of the 
skillful fisherman. 

The penguin is said to be even more greedy 
than the shag — in fact a winged seal both in 
capacity for destruction and in general appear- 
ance. The bird's wings are, indeed, little more 
than flippers, members almost useless in the 
air; but once under water they become famous 
paddles that propel with alternate strokes at a 
great speed while the feet are used only as a 
rudder. The penguin spends most of its time 
at sea, in the winds and the waves of the Ant- 
arctic circle, and is a deep sea diver of no mean 
ability. The auks, guillemots and puffins have 
similar habits and not dissimilar appearances. 



Chasing 
fish under 
water. 



The 
penguin. 



Auks and 
•puffins. 



226 



THE OPAL SEA 



Long- 
legged 
waders. 



Flamin- 
goes. 



And they all live by the sea and follow the 
fisher's calling. 

Beside these plungers and paddlers, there 
are long-legged waders that are continually pa- 
trolling the beaches or crossing the inlets or 
standing silently in the bays waiting for fish 
to pass. They have great curved necks that 
seem to draw out like telescopes, and bayonet 
bills that thrust, catch, and toss in the most 
expert manner. With appetites that relish al- 
most everything, and crops that can digest 
almost anything, they allow little to pass un- 
scathed along their highways. Whatever lives 
on or by the sea is grist for their mill. The 
beautiful rose-red flamingo, with the misshapen 
beak that would seem to handicap him in pur- 
suit of prey, is one of the ablest of these hunt- 
ers. The beak is little more than a box, the 
edges of which are guarded by lamellce, and 
the food (composed of the smaller salt water 
snails) is sifted through the box in a not very 
different manner from that in which the ba- 
lsenid whale strains sea life through his whale- 
bone mesh. He wades the marshes, works with 
his head and bill "upside down," so that the 
upper mandible shovels through the bottom 
mud ; and though ungainly he is far from being 
ill-fed. 



GRAY WINGS 



227 



The scarlet ibis of the tropics and the black- 
and-white ibis of Egypt, though not classed 
with the flamingoes, have similar habits if not 
similar equipments. By the Egyptians the ibis 
was held sacred because of its purity, and 
by the Hebrews it was thought "unclean"; 
but at the present day neither belief ob- 
tains, and many of the irreverent or unthink- 
ing eat the bird for a stork as opportunity 
offers. 

The storks often travel far inland and yet 
are also found along the coast. Like the herons 
and bitterns they are eaters of the small fry 
of the sea, waders of the pools and marshes, 
people of long necks, legs, and bills. They are 
somewhat awkward as they move along the 
shore, and not too graceful when they fly; but 
they are not wanting in skillful handling of the 
neck and the bill. With them moving up and 
down the coasts at stated seasons in great V- 
shaped flocks are the cranes, perhaps the largest 
of all the waders. They, too, often go far in- 
land; but with the storks and the herons they 
are essentially water birds and consider the 
shore their habitat. There they feed and there 
at odd seasons they indulge in strange dances, 
processions and races — antics more astonishing 
than a Moqui snake dance — accompanied by 



The scarlet 



Storks 



228 



THE OPAL SEA 



Shore birds. 



Turn- 
stones and 
sand 
pipers. 



cries and apparent comments to be understood 
only by the crane family. 

With the larger waders that flock by the sea 
and live upon the spawn of the waters are 
countless small birds with slim legs that trip 
along the beaches, running here and there over 
the wet sand, gathering what the last wave 
has brought in. They are usually called 
" snipe " by the unscientific, and " shore birds " 
by the inclusive; and true enough there are 
snipe among them. The stilts, the yellow-legs, 
and the willets might come into that category, 
but hardly the plovers and the curlews. But 
they are all more or less native to the shore and 
feed upon its lesser shell fish and worms. This 
is true of the still smaller birds, the turnstones 
that get their name from turning over stones 
in search of minute life, and the many varieties 
of sand pipers. The latter travel in flocks of 
from ten to twenty and spend their days scam- 
pering along the beaches. They are very alert, 
very energetic, very graceful; and their little 
thin legs move so fast at times that, like the 
spokes of a fast-traveling wheel, they cannot 
be seen. Ever the large eye and the large bill 
are seeking food. That seems the constant 
quest of all life in or by the sea. 

Sometimes a small flock of these sand pipers, 



GRAY WINGS 



229 



moving about on the wing in a fog, loses its 
shore line and drifts out to sea. It is not an 
unusual sight to see a half dozen of them five 
hundred miles from the coast, skimming along 
the surface, wheeling at sharp angles, and flash- 
ing the white of their under wing-feathers in 
the sun. When so seen they fly very rapidly, 
veer very often, and shift their course capri- 
ciously. It is always quite evident that they 
are lost, that they are beating about the waters 
as homing pigeons circle in the upper air when 
trying to orient themselves. Shipwrecked sail- 
ors in an open boat are hardly more helpless 
or more frightened. 

Even more terror-stricken are the small land 
birds like the finches and warblers that singly 
or in pairs are sometimes seen far out on the 
ocean. By some error in night travel or by 
reason of fog or driving storm they lose their 
bearings and quickly get out of sight of land. 
When a ship with its masts is sighted they turn 
to it, no doubt, as to a tree in the desert; and 
no noise or attempts at capture will drive them 
away for more than a few minutes. They re- 
turn and cling wearily to the shrouds or ride 
on the cross-trees sitting in a ruffled and hud- 
dled heap with all jauntiness gone, and all song 
reduced to a saddened " cheep ! " 



Sand 
pipers 
lost at sea. 



Finches 
and 

warblers in 
the shrouds. 



230 



THE OPAL SEA 



Land birds 
at sea quite 
helpless. 



Equipment 
of the 
true sea 
wanderer. 



But the finches and warblers were never de- 
signed for the watery waste. Even the snipes 
and the sand pipers, with the whole tribe of 
beach and shore birds, were given no more than 
a limited equipment for ocean travel. They 
belong to the land. That is, they skirt the 
coast, beat along the breakers, perhaps cruise 
out to sea for a day; but they go back to the 
shore at night. They weary when the sun goes 
down, and like Noah's dove keep returning to 
what they regard as home. They must have 
a resting place for the sole of the foot. 

Nature when she planned the bird life of the 
open sea builded better than that. Above all 
she planned for endurance — endurance of cold, 
wind, storm, hunger. And she eliminated the 
homing instinct and made many of the wave 
wanderers for solitude. Domesticity on the 
land for a few weeks was given them only for 
breeding purposes. For the rest of the time 
they were destined to be the true ocean waifs, 
traveling alone hither and yon, always songless 
and sometimes voiceless, with eyes seldom clos- 
ing in sleep, and with wings seldom folding in 
rest. 

The make-up of the sea bird is, indeed, re- 
markable and yet not extraordinary. It is no 
more than the expected; and is only another 



GRAY WINGS 



231 



illustration of nature's fashioning things to an 
end and for a purpose. The body is usually 
very small — little more than a rack of bones 
and a wedge of sinews. An oily quality of the 
flesh, derived from a fish diet, and an outer 
layer of fat provide heat and enable the bird 
to live in the coldest climates. In addition 
there is a thick but light plumage that not only 
wards off cold and wet but adds to the buoyancy 
of the bird in the air as in the water. The 
muscling, in proportion to size, is prodigious. 
The wing muscles, for instance, are developed 
to the last degree of elasticity, pliability and 
flexibility. It seems as though nothing could 
weary them. And the task imposed upon them 
is more than herculean. The bird spends 
whole days, and even whole weeks, upon the 
wing, darting, soaring, wheeling, diving. The 
enormous wings with their motor of muscles 
behind them always seem sufficient unto every 
emergency or requirement. They not only up- 
hold the body for days at a time but they ride 
the breeze or gale, they tack, sail free, or dead 
ahead, as the bird wills; and with apparently 
as little effort as thistle down drifting with the 
wind. 

Many of these ocean birds are gray-winged 
and gray-backed, though not all of them. The 



Muscling 
and feather- 
ing ofcsea 
birds. 



Their 

enormous 

endurance. 



232 



THE OPAL SEA 



Gray color- 
ing of sea 
birds. 



Terns. 



Gulls and 
their flight. 



gulls, terns and frigate birds are white or black 
or mixed; but the shearwaters, cape pigeons 
and petrels are gray-hued, sooty or blackish 
gray. Pew, indeed, of the true sea birds have 
bright colors. The rose-hued tern is about the 
gayest of them all ; and even he prefers to do his 
fishing in sight of the land, though by instinct 
and equipment he belongs to the sea. All the 
tern family are graceful birds in flight, dart- 
ing, skimming, twisting in a way that has 
brought them the colloquial name of " sea- 
swallows." In color the majority of them are 
gray on the back and white on the breast. They 
have a red foot, a sharp red bill, and a forked 
tail which rather marks them apart from the 
gulls, though in reality they are closely allied 
to the gull family. The shore with its schools 
of small fish is their hunting ground though 
sometimes a piece of wreck far out at sea or a 
scrap of drifting wood will have a group of 
them occupying it. 

The gulls like the terns usually have white 
feathering below with gray backs; but the dif- 
ferent species vary the monotony with whites 
and blacks. By virtue of long pointed wings 
they are extremely graceful in darting, plung- 
ing, and twisting, if somewhat heavy and awk- 
ward in straight-away flying. They are, how- 



GRAY WINGS 



233 



ever, strong of wing and small of body and can 
stand the all-day flight without fatigue. Some- 
times they are seen following ships long dis- 
tances from the shore — following by day and 
disappearing at night, probably to rest on the 
water — but usually they prefer the confines of 
the shore. In the company of the shore birds 
they ply the trade of highwayman or sneak- 
thief, robbing other birds of their catch, and 
plundering each other whenever possible. Every 
pelican, for instance, generally has a gull com- 
panion who sticks to him closer than a brother, 
and filches what he can from the pelican's 
quarry. When they must they take to small 
fishing, but they much prefer playing the scav- 
enger or the thief. Yet the gull is a handsome 
bird in spite of his habits; and he is not to be 
despised as a sailer. 

A more famous sailer, however, is the frigate 
bird. With the gulls he likes the region along 
shore; but he hunts out to sea long distances, 
and travels with less expenditure of energy than 
any member of the feathered tribe. It is im- 
possible to imagine anything more graceful 
upon the wing than this bird. Along the Mexi- 
can coasts, as far south as Panama, he is fre- 
quently seen, at times perhaps a thousand feet 
above the earth, standing still like a box kite 



How gulls 
live. 



The frigate 
bird. 



234 



THE OPAL SEA 



The won- 
derful 
sailer. 



A sea 
pirate. 



with no apparent wing motion; at other times 
he drifts or circles like the condor but with in- 
finitely lighter wing; and, still at other times, 
when in pursuit of prey, he rises, falls, darts 
or follows like an arrow shot from a cedar bow. 
No matter where sits the wind or how strong 
it blows the expanded wings seem to gather it 
and convert it instantly into power. The wings 
are the things. Tremendously long they are 
(about six feet from tip to tip) for a bird no 
larger than a crow. The tail — the long forked 
tail that opens and shuts as the bird wills — 
seems to be a necessary steering gear to such an 
expanse of sail. And he is a veritable Captain 
Kidd " as he sails, as he sails," a coast pirate 
flying the black flag (for there is not a white 
feather about him), and plundering whatever 
crosses his track. He is no fisherman so far as 
plunging or diving goes, he hates contact with 
the water and is seldom seen in it; but he is a 
keen watcher of the boobies, gulls, and terns, 
and when they have made a capture he does 
the best he can to take it away from them. 
And he usually succeeds for he is feared by 
all the coast tribe. It is said, too, that he 
plunders the nests of other birds, devours the 
young, and occasionally eats small turtles. 
When driven out to sea by hunger he does a 



GKAY WINGS 



235 



curious kind of fishing among the flying fishes. 
He is the bird that follows the school and 
pounces upon the flier when he leaves the water 
to avoid the jaw of the albicore. The swoop 
down of the bird and the dash upward, with- 
out touching the water, is a wonderful sight. 
The eagle and the hawk sometimes chase a wild 
duck from the sky to the water's brim, return- 
ing skyward on a swift parabola; but it is no 
such black thunder-bolt performance as the 
frigate bird exhibits. 

All told the frigate bird has a bad reputa- 
tion, though why he should be pilloried more 
than the other sea birds one is at loss to say. 
All birds are thieves, cut-throats, and murder- 
ers. That is their way of getting a living. The 
frigate bird is simply better endowed than the 
others, and instead of doing the catching or 
dragging down, he prefers to rob the catcher. 
Certainly he is admirably fitted for piracy. 
And though he does no week-long flights upon 
the water he is in make-up well fitted for the 
open ocean. The large untiring wing, the 
buoyant feathers, the spare body, the lonely dis- 
position (for he is seldom seen in company, 
though he has been tamed and used as a mes- 
sage bearer between the islands in the Low 
Archipelago) were given him that he might 



Frigate 
bird 

catching 
flying fish. 



Frigate 
bird's bad 
reputation. 



His fitness 
for long 
flights. 



236 



THE OPAL SEA 



The wan- 
dering 
albatross. 



Flight 
feathers of 
the alba- 
tross. 



travel the sea. Perhaps the only reasons why 
he is not seen there oftener are the scarcity of 
birds to fish for him, and his love of a rocky 
height rather than an uneasy wave for a rest- 
ing place. 

In this respect the albatross is perhaps a 
more perfect example of fitness to an environ- 
ment. He is always a deep sea wanderer, is 
more at home in storm and wave and cold than 
in calm; and, by instinct rather than prefer- 
ence, comes to land only for a brief breeding 
period. He is much larger than the frigate bird 
and not so trim and shapely in form; but his 
expanse of wing enables him to handle himself 
in a really marvellous manner. Eising from 
the water he flaps his wings awkwardly like a 
gull or a pelican; but once launched he wheels 
or turns or follows with scarcely a motion of 
body, wing or tail. The wings are long and 
narrow, containing a greater number of flight 
feathers than those of any other bird, and cer- 
tainly in flight they carry the albatross with 
wonderful ease. He follows a ship for days at 
a time (dropping away at night and returning 
in the morning) with never a motion of the 
wing, let the ship tack or sail free as it will. 
Only when there is a hasty descent for refuse 
cast overboard is there any perceptible wing ac- 



GEAT WINGS 



237 



tion. Storms, squalls, head winds do not have 
the slightest effect upon him. Commander 
Wilkes speaks of him as " resting as it were im- 
movable in the storm," and many other ob- 
servers offer similar statements. The flight is 
the perfection of aerial navigation. 

The wandering albatross (Diomedea exul- 
ans) is rarely found north of the equator. He 
is devoted to the cold and storms of the Antarc- 
tic, and, if he is led toward the equator, it is 
only in pursuit of food. Like the gull he is a 
scavenger first and always, a sea vulture eat- 
ing refuse. He follows ships for that purpose, 
has a nose like a buzzard, and either sees or 
scents ocean carrion, such as a dead whale, at 
very long distances. His habits hardly make 
him a romantic bird, and yet he is beloved by 
the sailor, and has been made the subject of 
numerous poetic eulogies. And deservedly so. 
For he is a thing of beauty upon the wing as 
he rides the wind beside the traveling ship, and 
in the lonely portions of the ocean where he is 
seen, his white presence is always a welcome 
variety in the sea circle. 

Some of the open-sea birds, whose doings are 
not so well known as those of the albatross, are 
said to be " strange " or " mysterious " ; but 
the strangeness lies not so much with the birds 



His sailing 
qualities. 



Where and 
how the 
albatross 
lives. 



The tropic 
bird. 



238 



THE OPAL SEA 



His steer- 
ing gear. 



Cape 
pigeons 
and whale 
birds. 



as with our ignorance. The tropic bird is one 
of the suspects. He has a long narrow wing 
like that of the albatross and as a sailer can 
point dead in the eye of the wind with as little 
effort as any inhabitant of the air. As for his 
steering gear it is composed of only two long 
tail-feathers; but these seem sufficient to con- 
trol the wide wings and work wonders in tack- 
ing, pitching, and angle darting. He travels 
alone, follows the ship, and at such distances 
from the shore as to preclude all possibility of 
his returning to land to rest. No doubt when 
weary he rests upon the waters like the alba- 
tross. 

Smaller than the tropic birds and with just 
as little known about them, are the cape pigeons 
of the Southern Ocean; and, if possible, still 
rarer as a sight are the whale birds that occa- 
sionally gather about sea carrion or ocean dere- 
licts. The shearwaters that skim the surface 
like a skipping stone, belong to the same family 
of ocean travelers; and are seen swiftly wheel- 
ing, bounding, veering along almost every sea. 
They are powerful of wing and like the whale 
birds seem always in the air. Indeed, it is said 
of the latter that though always over the sea 
they never touch it. But they have the web- 
foot and no doubt that foot knows its element. 



GRAY WINGS 



239 



The sailors' tale of sea birds never alight- 
ing in the water is perhaps truer, compara- 
tively, of the petrel — Wilson's petrel (Oceanites 
oceanicus) — than any other. If there is a wing 
that never tires, that is capable of motion in- 
definitely, week in and week out, it is that of 
the petrel. The idea is not so impossible, not 
so fantastic, as seems at first blush. The hu- 
man heart beats without a pause for seventy 
years; why not the petrel's wing for, say, sev- 
enty hours ? It all depends upon the muscling. 
Everyone knows the stout fibre of the heart 
and why it does not grow weary; and yet the 
petrel's wing-and-breast muscles are even more 
powerful after their kind. Just so with his 
brother, the stormy petrel (Procellaria pela- 
gica) , the bird known to sailors as " Mother 
Carey's Chicken." The " chicken " is, in size, 
no larger than a robin — the very smallest of all 
the web-footed birds. In color he is as gray- 
black or sooty as a chimney swallow, even to 
his legs, with the exception of some white on 
the wings and near the tail. He is seldom if 
ever seen resting on the sea, nor does he rest 
or sail upon the wing like the albatross. On 
the contrary, the wings are always moving, and 
the flight is never straight-away, but twisting, 
turning, gyrating. Again he is never seen high 



Wilson's 
petrel. 



The stormy 
petrel. 



240 



THE OPAL SEA 



The flight 
of the 
petrel 



The un- 
resting 
wing. 



Self reli- 
ance of the 
petrel. 



up in the air, but usually a few inches above 
the water ; and as he flies his long blackish legs 
hang down and his web feet seem to pat the 
surface of the storm waves with the lightest 
possible touch. 

With such a flight he goes for days and 
nights (for aught we know for weeks and 
months) up and down the waves, darting 
through the troughs, slipping along smooth 
hollows, paddling up the sides of water wedges, 
mounting over drives of spray, delighting in 
wind and rain; and never quite so much at 
home as when the spindrift is flying. He 
does not stop to alight, even when he finds 
food; but keeps a beating wing and a dancing 
foot above it until the little hooked bill se- 
cures it. Then on and on again, knowing no 
resting place, knowing no home, now by the 
icebergs of the Antarctic, now with the storm 
waves of the Atlantic, as fearless of loneliness 
as of tempests, traveling where no other life is 
seen — the bravest, freest, most self-reliant bird 
ever known to man. 

The gray-black wing of the stormy petrel 
has not solved the problem of perpetual mo- 
tion; but it has suggested once again how hap- 
pily nature fits her creatures to their home and 
arms them for their special needs. What a 



GRAY WINGS 



241 



life for a bird, condemned to solitude and storm 
and strife, marked for an unresting wanderer 
up and down 

" the fearful hollows of the barren sea! ' 

And yet, as with the octopus, are we quite sure 
that we have the petrel's point of view? Is he 
a lonely exile, an Ahasuerus of the sea? Is 
there no pleasure in existence for him ? Surely 
nature never planned such perfect development 
without meaning to turn loneliness into so- 
ciety, hardships into pleasures, and exertion 
into joy. What is the storm to the well-lapped 
plumage, the seething wave to the finely webbed 
foot, or the winter gale to the masterful wing ? 
Merely the playthings of existence, some of the 
stubborn circumstances from which are wrung 
the joy of living. 

The flight of the petrel, the incessant throb 
of his wings through so many opposing ele- 
ments, his untiring spirit and determination to 
live and be happy even on a bourneless ocean, 
is there not in these a now-familiar lesson for 
us? Are they not once more indicative, even 
typical, of the persistence of life and the in- 
sistence that the species shall not perish? Al- 
ways where the conditions are so unfavorable 
that extinction would seem the only result at- 



The soli- 
tary life. 



Joy in 
adversity. 



The per- 
sistence of 
life. 






242 



THE OPAL SEA 



The omni- 
present 
energy 



Fitness 
and beauty. 



Coloring of 
the sea 
birds. 



tainable there nature puts forth an extra effort, 
launches a hardier life, is more triumphantly 
dominant than elsewhere. Petrels come and 
petrels go but the type remains. The dull gray 
wings flash their reflections in the wave-facets 
to-day as thousands of years ago. They shall 
always be as they have been, they shall always 
beat and hover and gather — fit emblem of that 
omnipresent energy that throughout creation 
keeps coming and going, backward and for- 
ward, weaving new threads into the fabric of 
life that the splendid tapestry shall not fade 
but endure and be a joy forever. 

And always with energy, life, and fitness is 
the gift of beauty. To the sea bird is given not 
only grace in flight above all others, but also 
charm of color. These gray wings of the open 
sea whose neutral tints blend so easily with 
mist and fog and cloud, the white breasts that 
match the breaking foam, the black backs that 
seem to melt at night into the purple sea itself, 
are they not marvels to the eye though not 
glittering with all the hues of the rainbow? 
Their wonderful harmony with their sea back- 
ground should acclaim their appropriateness, 
and, consequently, their beauty. 

Blacks and whites and grays in nature's 
hands are never other than badges of distinction 



GRAY WINGS 



243 



and refinement. For again, and still again., 
unto the least of her children nature has given 
as much design and beauty as unto the greatest. 
Not alone for those that walk the earth or 
thread the lakes and rivers does she labor; but 
also for those that beat the coast and fly the 
unfrequented water-fields of the ocean. Gray 
Wings — they, too, are a part of the plan, they, 
too, have a mission to fulfil, and they, too, 
have their portion of the life and care and wis- 
dom of Creation. 



Wings a 
part of the 
plan. 



CHAPTEE XII 



SHIPS THAT PASS 



Coming 
down to 
the sea. 



The native 
element. 



Coming down to the shore, threading a way 
through hills or fields or dimes, with what 
a thrill of joy, of exultation, we at last behold 
the outstretched sea! The sight gives one 
pause. The far-away shimmer of the surface, 
the great body of color, the myriads of dancing 
waves, the vastness of the expanse, hold the at- 
tention spell-bound. For the nonce the smell 
of salt air, the sound of surge, the wash of 
breakers, the scream of tern and gull, keep 
beating at our senses in vain. Perhaps we are 
silent or overcome or at least fearful lest we 
cry out with emotional feeling. And if we did 
w'e should not be exceptional or singular. 
When Xenophon and the retreating Ten Thou- 
sand finally came within sight of the Euxine 
the whole army shouted. The sea no doubt was 
a glimpse of home to them; and in a larger 
sense it may mean the same thing to us. For 

"All mankind is thus at heart 
Not anything but what thou art 
And Earth, Sea, Man are all in each." 
244 



SHIPS THAT PASS 



245 



There is, at times, a feeling common to every 
one of us that we are a part of the universal 
whole, that sometime in the history of the race 
we were more closety related to the elements 
than now; and that perhaps originally the sea 
was the cradle of us all. 

But how long do we dream of our elemental 
origin, how long are we impressed or emotional 
or exclamatory over the immensity of the sea? 
We wander by the shore, we follow the rise and 
fall of trooping waves, watch the rush of water 
up the beach, and presently, for all our love 
of the beautiful, we are looking at things and 
not seeing them. The mind becomes uneasy, 
lonely, somewhat afraid; and finally reverts to 
mankind and the doings of the race. Then the 
eyes no longer behold the sea. They sweep 
around the horizon not for the sapphire glow of 
the waves but for what the waves may tell of 
humanity, not for the gray wings that come 
and go along the hollows and the crests but for 
the white wings of ships that rise and fall. 

A sail ! a sail ! How the vision strains at the 
distant spot of dull white ! How closely that 
spot is scanned for sign or signal of whence it 
came or whither it goes ! We have an interest, 
a sympathy there. For each ship with her com- 
pany and cargo that hovers along the distant 



Emotions 
by the sea. 



The uneasy 
mind. 



The dis- 
tant sail. 



246 



THE OPAL SEA 



The dis- 
appearing 
ship. 



Watchers 
of the sea. 



Ships that 
have passed. 



horizon stretching her wings for Good Hope or 
the Horn, is a venture that puts man's inven- 
tion and supremacy to the test anew. And 
besides there go our friends and kindred. Will 
they come back from the roaring sea successful 
in their enterprise or will those sails fade into 
the Great Silence and never be heard from 
again? What wonder, indeed, that hopes and 
fears and prayers should go with her, and that 
eyes should strain after the white canvas until 
it drop below the verge? 

It was always so. In all ages there have been 
watchers of the sea — tear-dimmed eyes follow- 
ing the disappearing sails, bright eyes watch- 
ing the rising ones. A Scandinavian drakkar 
with its leather sail and dragon prow, beating 
seaward from some stubborn coast on warfare 
bent, or an Egyptian galley with its purple, per- 
fumed sails, carrying a Cleopatra up to Eome, 
never yet sank below the distant rim but that 
dark eyes marked its disappearance. The head- 
lands and beacon points have furnished look- 
outs for many centuries. 

And in that time what ships have passed! 
Sails of skin, of papyrus, of bamboo, of wool, 
of hemp — lug sails, square sails, lateen sails — 
in brilliant procession have swept athwart the 
two immensities, their great wind areas darkly 



SHIPS THAT PASS 



247 



dyed with scarlet, orange, blue and purple. 
The gorgeous butterflies of commerce, chased 
by the eager winds from sea to sea — the wine- 
dark galleys of the iEgean, the red and azure 
argosies of the Adriatic, the gilded galleons of 
the Atlantic — have gone their way. In de- 
serted harbors and along unfrequented water 
ways of the East some reminders of them may 
still be seen ; but the old order has changed and 
the erstwhile golden age of navigation has given 
place to something new. 

Yet the sea has never lacked for ships to sail 
it. With each generation are launched new 
hulls, new sails, new fears, new hopes. The 
harbor to-day sends forth ships as a hive its 
working bees, and each craft as she beats out 
to sea is followed by eager eyes and applauding 
voices. The interest has not diminished in the 
least. Nor has the beauty of the ship grown 
less. For there is a beauty of ships as of sea 
birds, though the association of thought is 
rather to the detriment of the former. The 
fairest wings of the most graceful pleasure 
yacht that ever rode a summer sea are but 
clumsy mechanism compared with the white 
wings of the albatross or the black wings of the 
frigate bird. Nothing of human device can<J 
match the design of nature. The true sailer I 



The butter- 
flies of 
commerce. 



The harbor 
to-day. 



White wings 
and gray 
wings. 



248 



THE OPAL SEA 



The full- 
rigged ship. 



Colors of 
her sails. 



is bom not made. Yet considered by itself 
the sail boat is a marvel of grace; and to this 
latest day it is still a grand sight to see a 
full-rigged ship bowling down the bay, bound 
for the open sea, 

"With all her bravery on, and tackle trim, 
Sails fill'd, and streamers waving, 
Courted by all the winds that hold them play." 

And how splendidly picturesque she is as she 
foots it out to sea with her spread of silver 
canvas showing against the blue sky and slashed 
here and there by light and shade ! She pitches 
and lifts, careens and rights again; and all her 
canvas goes rolling with her — not violently, but 
gently drifting like white clouds in summer 
weather. Perhaps at evening she is standing 
still upon the horizon, half-becalmed, flattened 
against a purple bank of sea mist, and the orange 
hues of sunset are weaving strange colors in 
her drooping sails; or, stranger still, if from 
the Golden Gate she beats out to sea against a 
yellow sunset, all her sails turn azure ; or if the 
sun be red the sails assume a fairy green. 

The sun is, indeed, a wonderful alchemist 
and loves to throw delicate, complementary and 
reflected colors on neutral grounds. And noth- 
ing could be a finer field than a great, white 



SHIPS THAT PASS 



249 



sail — except a great, colored sail. The cruise 
of a yachting squadron up the Atlantic coast 
in July, the schooners careening under clouds 
of white canvas, is certainly impressive. Not 
only lightness of movement is there, but count- 
less combinations of shadow and color as well. 
By comparison the fishing boats that put off 
from Eagusa or Corfu are heavy in their move- 
ments. The lateen sails sway easily enough, 
but the barcas ride low and careen little. Color, 
however, saves them. A few miles away, where 
form and movement become less apparent, the 
yellow, orange, and red sails show merely as 
triangular spots on the blue sea; and blending 
as they do into the rosy strata of sea air they 
become marvelous in depth of hue. 

Nothing connected with ships is quite so col- 
orful as this. The Venetian sails coming up 
the Adriatic at sunset — ruby lights upon a sea 
of pearl — have been pictured many times; but 
the gem-like quality of the coloring has never 
been painted. Compared with them the can- 
vas of the Gloucester fleet moving toward the 
Banks is a dismal gray, and the Concarneau 
boats, coming home at evening, appear as 
wedges of dull chocolate-brown. The sails of 
the Adriatic, famous since the days of the Bu- 
centaur, are still wonderful to behold. 



A white 
yachting 
squadron. 



Colored 
sails of the 
Adriatic. 



Venetian 

fishing 

boats. 



250 



THE OPAL SEA 



The ocean 
steamer. 



The 
steamer 
putting to 
sea. 



But however much of actual beauty clings to 
a sail, and however much of traditional rever- 
ence bids us scorn an innovation, is there not 
something to be said for the grim, fire-spitting 
ocean steamer? In common with all steam de- 
vices the steamship has come in for a fair share 
of denunciation; but as a machine, as a resist- 
less force, is there not something here to stir 
the pulses? As she sweeps down the harbor 
and out over the bar, flags streaming, black 
smoke trailing, wide wake rolling, what could 
be finer! She sits low down aft, she rises up 
clean and keen forward, her cutwater is as eager 
as a headsman's axe, her smoke stacks have a 
slant astern as though ready for any wind or 
wave. What a sense of power is there! What 
can stop the passage of that dark conqueror ! 
And she moves with no apparent effort. The 
source of power is not disclosed to the eye. 
Nor can the ear detect the beat of engines. 
The steel mass seems to be driven by a force 
as invisible as resistless. 

No prayers to Oceanus, the parent of the 
gods, go up when the ocean liner puts to sea. 
.ZEolus is not invoked for favorable winds nor 
are the Tritons and Nereides put in good hu- 
mor with promises and offerings. The ship 
of steel and steam seems to care little for the 



SHIPS THAT PASS 



251 



elements. The tremendous power in the en- 
gines carries her through wind and storm, 
through wave and spray. Nothing halts or 
holds her for more than a moment. As the 
waters come rushing at her there is an easy- 
bend and sway to the long body; she rises and 
falls, rolls quietly with a broadside, pitches 
sharply with a head sea; but there is no pause, 
no stop. The steady thrust of the screws keeps 
driving her ever on and on. Far away at sea 
her motion is still apparent, and finally when 
she is hull down beyond the rim, and only the 
black banner of smoke trailing along the hori- 
zon tells where she "blows/' we still feel that 
she is moving, shouldering the waves away, 
pushing on and on; methodically, mechanically 
if you will, but still resistlessly. 

The mechanism and the method become al- 
most human in their stubborn perseverance 
when the vessel is steaming in storm against 
fierce head winds. There is the deep plunge of 
the bow in the waves, the alternate lift of the 
stern out of water, the swift racing of the ex- 
posed screws for a few moments; and then the 
settling down again to a steady thump-thump, 
thump-thump, thump-thump ! The waves may 
board her and break davits, bridges, and stan- 
chions, she may pitch and roll till cabin and 



The power 
of steam. 



The steady 
drive for- 
ward. 



Steaming 

through 

storm. 



252 



THE OPAL SEA 



The per- 
sistent 
engines. 



The pic- 
turesque 
ship at sea. 



hold are a series of crashes and smashes, but 
those indomitable engines keep up their pulsa- 
tions. You lie awake in the middle of the 
night clinging to your berth, hearing the whip- 
like swish of the spray flying by the port hole, 
listening to the roar of the wind in the rigging, 
feeling the vessel pitch and stagger under you, 
and perhaps wondering if rivets and plates of 
steel can long hold out against such wrenching ; 
but still beneath you, skipping no beat, is the 
welcome thump-thump, thump-thump, thump- 
thump of the engines. She was designed to 
defy the winds and fight the elements and she 
does it — with some groanings from strained 
partition, beam, and girder it may be, but still 
she does it. 

All ships that come and go along the water- 
ways, whether by steam or by sail, have pic- 
torial importance in the panorama of the seas. 
Not pleasure yacht or ocean " greyhound " 
alone, not the lateen sails of Venice or the gray 
wings of Newfoundland; but the lone bark 
that stands up along the horizon like a square 
tower, the coasting schooner that trails her flat 
sails along some rocky shore, the tank steamer 
slowly moving with her own cloud of smoke, 
the big freighter lumbering up and down the 
distant waves — they all have their measure of 



SHIPS THAT PASS 



253 



beauty in the scene. Even the battleship and 
the arrow-like torpedo boat, if we could forget 
their grim mission on the seas, might prove 
attractive. Certainly their graceful motion, 
their enormous rush through the water, the in- 
herent power felt in every push or curve or 
bend of them, commands not only respect but 
admiration. Perhaps we are too near to them 
now to see them sympathetically, but when 
these times shall become the " good old times," 
there will be poetry and to spare about the 
present-day thunderers of the seas. 

Eomance usually clings to things that are 
past and eventually all the ships pass on — pass 
out. Eibs of oak and plates of steel and tur- 
rets of nickel find a common resting place 
sooner or later. It is as often in the depths as 
on the shore, and every coast has its graveyard 
where, far down in the darkness, schooner, brig, 
barkentine, steamer and cruiser nestle side by 
side in the soft ooze of the bottom and know 
the wind and the wave no more. Perhaps with 
them and near them are scattered the bones of 
many a crew that went down with the ship, 
lashed in the rigging or caught under hatches. 
And perhaps again no word ever came back 
from the sea to tell the fate of either men or 
ships. This it is that is accounted the "mys- 



The oattle- 
ship and 
our point 
of view. 



The com- 
mon rest- 
ing place 
of ships. 



254 



THE OPAL SEA 



The tragedy 
of the sea. 



The un- 
thinking 
sea not 
' 'rapa- 
cious." 



The grim 
sea tales 
furnished 
by men. 



tery " and the " tragedy " of the sea. The de- 
struction of the sea life that goes on beneath 
the surface day in and day out, the killing and 
devouring;, the slaughter of untold millions for 
food, are accepted as matters of course, things 
of no great moment; but when the destruction 
extends to man, when two hundred men die in 
the sea instead of in the air, the event is a 
" horror " and the sea is referred to as " rapa- 
cious " or as a "remorseless monster/' 

But the unthinking sea is it so much more 
" remorseless " than the other elements or more 
" rapacious " than the personified deities of 
men? Did not the gods at Ilios spin the web 
of death for some that others in the time to 
come might have a song? And do not all the 
elements — all great Nature's self at times — 
turn " red in tooth and claw " and spread de- 
struction up and down the world? The sea by 
itself considered is neither "mysterious" nor 
"tragic" nor "rapacious"; it is simply the 
sea. 

And whatsoever of evil may be found upon 
the waters has it not followed upon the foot- 
steps of man? The wars of maritime states, 
the oppression of conquerors, the atrocities 
of the slavers, the ravages of the buccaneers, 
have always furnished forth the grim sea 



SHIPS THAT PASS 



255 



tales. What pages smeared with blood and 
reeking with smoke they are ! We read the 
record, count over the destruction — the wanton 
waste by fire and sword of life and loveliness 
— and sadly wonder that such things could ever 
be. Nor does the present furnish forth a less 
ghastly story. There is no more of the pirate's 
brigantine flying the black flag upon the high 
seas; but the battle ship of civilization is with 
us to deal out, in the name of liberty and en- 
lightenment, a destruction more violent and 
more widespread. Is the change very much for 
the better? Is death hurled from a machine 
gun preferable to walking the plank? And in 
all time, in all history, has not the real " hor- 
ror " of the sea been not storm but man ; and 
the "remorseless monster" not the wave but 
man's beautiful engine of destruction, the ship ? 
If the tale were truly told it would be roman- 
tic only in its hideousness. For the bloodshed 
and the ruin of it have not resulted from the 
pursuit of life or happiness or knowledge or 
beauty or even fair commerce. From the be- 
ginning the quest of the Argonauts has been the 
golden fleece. Men have ventured and en- 
dured and labored and died for mere gold. 
That gilded lure drew on the early explorers 
through harrowing hardships to the most dis- 



The real 
horror of 
the sea. 



The quest 
of gold and 
its results. 



256 



THE OPAL SEA 



The hard- 
ships of the 
explorers. 



Searching 
for gold at 
the north. 



Sunken 
treasures. 



tant seas. Even the Arctic regions were ran- 
sacked in the search. For at one time the tra- 
dition obtained that under the Northern Lights, 
under the pole was hidden gold in fabulous 
quantities, guarded by gnomes and goblins as 
the Eheingold by Mimi and the Ehine Maidens. 
But the seekers found only starvation and the 
cold of death. The vast unknown of the Arc- 
tic, the weird lights of summer, the brilliant 
coloring of the auroras, the twilight skies, the 
walls of ice crystal, the waves of glass, the pur- 
ple shadows upon snow and ice were all lost 
upon the voyagers. They were bent upon a 
more sordid mission. 

Even to this day, when the treasure-tales 
have grown somewhat threadbare, the forecastle 
still listens to accounts of Kidd's wealth buried 
on Gardiner's Island ; to the tale of the Spanish 
galleon " San Pedro " sunk in the Margarita 
Channel on the Central American coast so many 
years ago, with all her golden images and pre- 
cious stones and thirty millions in doubloons; 
to the legend of the French frigate, " La Lu- 
tino " which went down in the Zuider Zee with 
three hundred and thirty golden bars beside 
bags and kegs of coin. The glitter of gold still 
dazzles. 

The races of to-day have been, in some re- 



SHIPS THAT PASS 



257 



spects, true enough descendants of the Argo- 
nauts. The oceans are still harried and quar- 
reled over in the name of gain; and that race 
hatred, which has so often turned the sea into 
a plain of battles and tinged the blue waves 
crimson, has been the natural consequence of 
the pursuit. Yet not every ship has flown the 
red flag of hate, and not every crew has been 
on conquest bent. The peaceful trader has al- 
ways skirted the coasts. The honest merchant- 
man, the carrier, the middleman of the nations 
with his cargoes of stuffs, dyes, jewels and fair 
produce runs back to Egyptian days. Even 
with the great discoverers of Spain there went 
out caravels on missions of peace and good-will 
to men; and, in our own time, lines of full- 
rigged ships have gone around the Capes in the 
Oriental trade and swift-traveling clippers have 
come and gone to Europe and to China, to 
Australia and the islands of the seas, in the 
interests of morality and religion as well as 
commerce. 

They still come and go, faster now with 
steam than in the days of the famous " Dread- 
nought " and " Eed Jacket " ; and the compen- 
sation for envy and race hatred is coming in 
with a better understanding among the nations. 
Moreover the growth of commerce and the 



Race 
hatred on 
the sea. 



The early 
carriers and 
merchant- 



Ocean 
liners of 
to-day. 



258 



THE OPAL SEA 



Growing 
apprecia- 
tion of sea 



Atlantic 
crossings. 



speed of travel have done much to bring people 
together, done much to educate and enlighten 
mankind. The sea instead of being the impass- 
able waste it once was has now become the 
highway of the world, and those who travel 
it have not only come to a truer comprehension 
of their fellows, but they have grown to love 
the highway and the journey along it. 

For with a knowledge of the sea there is 
beginning to dawn in these latter days some 
appreciation of its purpose, its uses, and its 
superlative beauty. 3STow as the ocean steamer 
puts out for Europe with five hundred or a 
thousand on her passenger list not a few of that 
number have a pleasure in the thought : 

" Eastward, as far as the eye can see 
Still eastward, eastward endlessly 
The sparkle and tremor of purple sea." 

The crossing means to them something more 
than a week of discomfort in the cabin ; and the 
sea, as they follow its changes day by day and 
see its waters run the gamut of blue, green, 
violet and purple, becomes the most wonderful 
of all the elements. Year by year the wonder 
grows. All the brightness of the earth is but 
the sea's reflection. The life, the energy, the 
color of the globe, the opaline vapors blown 



SHIPS THAT PASS 



259 



about the heavens, the sky and the gorgeous 
staining of the horizon clouds, come from the 
sea. There is nothing it does not share, no 
splendor that it has not illuminated, no beauty 
that it has not made. The sea is above all, the 
supreme element ! 

And yet from that steamer deck sometimes 
sad eyes look out at night upon the rush of 
waters with their flashing white caps, and in 
the tumult of the stormy surface see only the 
likeness to the human struggle, the maddening 
strife for position and power, 

"the turbid ebb and flow 
Of human misery. " 

Inevitably will come with such a vision the use- 
lessness of endeavor, the hopelessness of con- 
flict, the certainty of defeat and death. If 
death then why postpone it? Why drag on 
another day, another year, only to be beaten 
down and overwhelmed at last? 

But that way lies madness. And for the mad 
the sea has her own special lure. The foaming 
caps keep beckoning with long, white fingers, 
and every wave that races down the steamer's 
side seems calling " Come ! Come ! " And men 
from time to time — mad men — have answered 
with a sudden spring over the rail and into the 



The su- 
preme 
element 



A false 
view. 



The lure 
of the sea. 



260 



THE OPAL SEA 



The suicide. 



Neither 
life nor the 
sea always 
storm- 



The main- 
tenance of 
life. 



dark sea; a wild plunge, feared and yet urged 
by some demoniac impulse. Perhaps contact 
with the water has suddenly dispelled delusion 
and the repentant one has come strangling to 
the surface with a frenzied cry for help. Who 
hears? And what help can avail in night and 
storm ? There is a swift rush past of the black 
side of the steamer, a useless clutch at it in 
the dark, the whirl and seethe and bubble of 
the water churned by the screws, and a glimpse 
of a ship's taffrail vanishing in darkness. Then 
the beat of crested waves, the fierce slash of 
spray across the eyes, the rush of smothering 
seas over the defenseless head; and in the gray 
morning gulls hovering and calling over a white 
face awash on the waves. 

But the analogy is misleading. Life is not 
like the tumult of a storm-tossed sea. It has 
its quiet periods, its hopeful years, its joys and 
triumphs and successes. The sea is not always 
agitated. It has its days of calms, its mornings 
of brilliancy, its noons of drowsiness, its even- 
ings of splendor. And the great law of nature 
that all life shall struggle for existence, that 
all the old shall pass away and be superseded 
by the new, that the type shall remain though 
the unit perish, is the only conceivable way of 
maintaining the order of the universe and fend- 



SHIPS THAT PASS 



261 



ing off extinction and decay. What matters 
it that the individual is lost? What matter 
that the sea adds here or destroys there? The 
energy and purity and life of it still continue. 

And shall continue. The great waters should 
be the last to go. That we do not stay to the 
end, if there be an end, is of no great moment. 
We have played our part and entered into the 
fulness of being, struggling with the energy 
within us, and enjoying the struggle. Nor is 
our output scattered to the winds. The new 
generations inherit and in them is the old life 
continued. It should not be a sad thought that 
when we, like ships, have passed on, the world 
will last, that its beauty will always be renewed, 
and that others will enjoy what we have known. 
Eather should it be wished that the fabric 
builded so perfectly, fashioned so wonderfully, 
might endure forever; and that the newer eyes 
as they open to the light might see still further 
and more truly than our own. Each coming 
man in vision counts himself beyond his father ; 
but it may be the world that changes rather 
than our eyes. In the time to come who can 
say what finer garmenting shall clothe the hills, 
what greater splendor shall adorn the sea ! 

Yet may the beauty that has been, continue ! 
May ships sail on and eyes still follow them till 



The sea the 
last to go. 



New eyes 
opening to 
the light. 



THE OPAL SEA 



The beauty 
that shall be. 



darkness settle in the purple east; may gray 
wings come and go along the deep wave-hollows 
and sea weeds stream beneath in swirling cur- 
rents and blue waves pour upon the shell-strewn 
beaches where crumbling cliff and broken prom- 
ontory look outward at the distant ocean ! And 
may that ocean with its shifting surface, in 
calm or storm, be grander far arid more sub- 
lime than ever; and may the eyes that watch 
see with a calmer faith and brighter the sun 
and moon rise up from out the wave, and in 
the growing dusk of years behold new stars of 
promise come forth with tremulous splendor to 
shine upon the Opal Sea. 



BOOKS BY JOHN C VAN DYKE 

Professor of the History of Art in Rutgers College 
PUBLISHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

The Meaning of 
Pictures 

With 31 full-page illustrations, iamo, $1.25 net 

"It may be questioned if any other book of its scope 
has ever shown 'the meaning of pictures' in a way that 
will make it so clear to the average English reader." 

— The Dial. 

"A book that is always calm and cool and right." 
— New York Evening Post. 

" Essentially sound and rational." — Outlook. 

" We could ask nothing better for the training of art 
taste in America than the wide circulation and careful 
reading of this sound and sensible introduction." 

— The Congregationalist. 

" An unusual quality in art criticism, plain common 
sense with a delightful avoidance of technical jargon." 

— New York Sun. 

" 'The Meaning of Pictures' has in abundant measure 
a happy kind of originality, the most genuine sort of help- 
fulness, and rare power to stimulate." — Boston Herald. 



BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE 



Nature for Its 
Own Sake 

First Studies in Natural Appearances 

i2mo, $1.50 



" No one can read it without having his knowledge 
of nature enlarged, his curiosity quickened, and his sen- 
sitiveness to the beauty that is all about him in the world 
increased and stimulated." — Chicago Tribune. 

" He writes clearly and simply and indulges in little 
rhetoric or false sentiment. His ' first studies,' therefore, 
will probably reveal to many people many things of 
which they were unaware." — The Nation. 

"A series of interesting and distinctly original essays." 
— Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

"A book of uncommon merit, first, in its point of 
view, and, second, in the peculiar skill with which the 
subject of nature is handled."- — Washington Post. 

"A book on nature widely different from anything 
yet written, and fresh, suggestive, and delightful." 

— New York Times. 

"A book for all nature lovers. ... A most 
delightful vade me cum" 

— Bliss Carman in New York Commercial Advertiser. 



BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE 



The Desert 

Further Studies in Natural 
Appearances 

With frontispiece, izmo, $1.25 net 

"The reader who once submits to its spell will hardly 
lay it aside until the last page is turned." 

— The Spectator (London). 

"This charming volume comes as strong wine indeed 
after the tepid rose-water of books dealing with snails and 
daffodils in suburban gardens. Mr. Van Dyke unques- 
tionably knows his desert; he has the true wanderer's eye 
for its essential fascination." — The Athenaum (London). 

"No virgin -rush of young impressions, but an adult 
mingling of vision and criticism in a style that engages 
without startling the attention." — London Academy. 

"Strange and curious reading, this book of the desert, 
and has all the fascination of things unaccustomed." 

— New York Tribune. 

"The writer's personality is carefully subordinated, 
but one cannot help feeling it strongly; that of a man 
more sensitive to color than to form, enthusiastic, but with 
a stern hand on his own pulse." — Atlantic Monthly. 



BY PROFESSOR JOHN C. VAN DYKE 



Art for Art's Sake 

Seven University Lectures on the 
Technical Beauties of Painting 

"With 24 reproductions of representative 
paintings. i2mo, $1.50 

" One of the best books on art that has ever been 
published in this country." — Boston Transcript. 

" We consider it the best treatise on the technic of 
painting for general readers." — The Nation. 

" Mr. Van Dyke is very good reading indeed, and 
withal remarkably clear and precise in explaining much 
that shapes itself but hazily in the brain of those interested 
in art." — London Spectator. 

" I do not know that there is a book in English from 
which one can learn more of what pictures are and why 
they are admired." — Dr. Talcott Williams. 

"Has all the recommendations that are to be looked 
for in essays of the kind. They take a broad survey, 
they deal with the points that it is worth while to know 
about, they are perfectly lucid, and they are very charm- 
ing in their literary art." — New York Sun. 

"Temperate and appreciative." — Atlantic Monthly. 

" Written in an easy, entertaining style." 

— New York Tribune. 



MAR. 3 1906 






« C OFfOEL^OCAT,0^ 

3 1906 



MM 12 1 906 



